The Crystal Stopper

by Maurice Leblanc

FOOTNOTES:

[B] See The Hollow Needle by Maurice Leblanc, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos, and later volumes of the Lupin series.

CHAPTER IV.

THE CHIEF OF THE ENEMIES

“Poor boy!” murmured Lupin, when his eyes fell on Gilbert’s letter next morning. “How he must feel it!”

On the very first day when he saw him, he had taken a liking to that well-set-up youngster, so careless, gay and fond of life. Gilbert was devoted to him, would have accepted death at a sign from his master. And Lupin also loved his frankness, his good humour, his simplicity, his bright, open face.

“Gilbert,” he often used to say, “you are an honest man. Do you know, if I were you, I should chuck the business and become an honest man for good.”

“After you, governor,” Gilbert would reply, with a laugh.

“Won’t you, though?”

“No, governor. An honest man is a chap who works and grinds. It’s a taste which I may have had as a nipper; but they’ve made me lose it since.”

“Who’s they?”

Gilbert was silent. He was always silent when questioned about his early life; and all that Lupin knew was that he had been an orphan since childhood and that he had lived all over the place, changing his name and taking up the queerest jobs. The whole thing was a mystery which no one had been able to fathom; and it did not look as though the police would make much of it either.

Nor, on the other hand, did it look as though the police would consider that mystery a reason for delaying proceedings. They would send Vaucheray’s accomplice for trial—under his name of Gilbert or any other name—and visit him with the same inevitable punishment.

“Poor boy!” repeated Lupin. “They’re persecuting him like this only because of me. They are afraid of his escaping and they are in a hurry to finish the business: the verdict first and then . . . the execution.... Oh, the butchers!... A lad of twenty, who has committed no murder, who is not even an accomplice in the murder....”

Alas, Lupin well knew that this was a thing impossible to prove and that he must concentrate his efforts upon another point. But upon which? Was he to abandon the trail of the crystal stopper?

He could not make up his mind to that. His one and only diversion from the search was to go to Enghien, where the Growler and the Masher lived, and make sure that nothing had been seen of them since the murder at the Villa Marie-Thérèse. Apart from this, he applied himself to the question of Daubrecq and nothing else.

He refused even to trouble his head about the problems set before him: the treachery of the Growler and the Masher; their connection with the gray-haired lady; the spying of which he himself was the object.

“Steady, Lupin,” he said. “One only argues falsely in a fever. So hold your tongue. No inferences, above all things! Nothing is more foolish than to infer one fact from another before finding a certain starting-point. That’s where you get up a tree. Listen to your instinct. Act according to your instinct. And as you are persuaded, outside all argument, outside all logic, one might say, that this business turns upon that confounded stopper, go for it boldly. Have at Daubrecq and his bit of crystal!”

Lupin did not wait to arrive at these conclusions before settling his actions accordingly. At the moment when he was stating them in his mind, three days after the scene at the Vaudeville, he was sitting, dressed like a retired tradesman, in an old overcoat, with a muffler round his neck, on a bench in the Avenue Victor-Hugo, at some distance from the Square Lamartine. Victoire had his instructions to pass by that bench at the same hour every morning.

“Yes,” he repeated to himself, “the crystal stopper: everything turns on that.... Once I get hold of it....”

Victoire arrived, with her shopping-basket on her arm. He at once noticed her extraordinary agitation and pallor:

“What’s the matter?” asked Lupin, walking beside his old nurse.

She went into a big grocer’s, which was crowded with people, and, turning to him:

“Here,” she said, in a voice torn with excitement. “Here’s what you’ve been hunting for.”

And, taking something from her basket, she gave it to him.

Lupin stood astounded: in his hand lay the crystal stopper.

“Can it be true? Can it be true?” he muttered, as though the ease of the solution had thrown him off his balance.

But the fact remained, visible and palpable. He recognized by its shape, by its size, by the worn gilding of its facets, recognized beyond any possible doubt the crystal stopper which he had seen before. He even remarked a tiny, hardly noticeable little scratch on the stem which he remembered perfectly.

However, while the thing presented all the same characteristics, it possessed no other that seemed out of the way. It was a crystal stopper, that was all. There was no really special mark to distinguish it from other stoppers. There was no sign upon it, no stamp; and, being cut from a single piece, it contained no foreign object.

“What then?”

And Lupin received a quick insight into the depth of his mistake. What good could the possession of that crystal stopper do him so long as he was ignorant of its value? That bit of glass had no existence in itself; it counted only through the meaning that attached to it. Before taking it, the thing was to be certain. And how could he tell that, in taking it, in robbing Daubrecq of it, he was not committing an act of folly?

It was a question which was impossible of solution, but which forced itself upon him with singular directness.

“No blunders!” he said to himself, as he pocketed the stopper. “In this confounded business, blunders are fatal.”

He had not taken his eyes off Victoire. Accompanied by a shopman, she went from counter to counter, among the throng of customers. She next stood for some little while at the pay-desk and passed in front of Lupin.

He whispered her instructions:

“Meet me behind the Lycée Janson.”

She joined him in an unfrequented street:

“And suppose I’m followed?” she said.

“No,” he declared. “I looked carefully. Listen to me. Where did you find the stopper?”

“In the drawer of the table by his bed.”

“But we had felt there already.”

“Yes; and I did so again this morning. I expect he put it there last night.”

“And I expect he’ll want to take it from there again,” said Lupin.

“Very likely.”

“And suppose he finds it gone?”

Victoire looked frightened.

“Answer me,” said Lupin. “If he finds it gone, he’ll accuse you of taking it, won’t he?”

“Certainly.”

“Then go and put it back, as fast as you can.”

“Oh dear, oh dear!” she moaned. “I hope he won’t have had time to find out. Give it to me, quick.”

“Here you are,” said Lupin.

He felt in the pocket of his overcoat.

“Well?” said Victoire, holding out her hand.

“Well,” he said, after a moment, “it’s gone.”

“What!”

“Yes, upon my word, it’s gone . . . somebody’s taken it from me.”

He burst into a peal of laughter, a laughter which, this time, was free from all bitterness.

Victoire flew out at him:

“Laugh away!... Putting me in such a predicament!...”

“How can I help laughing? You must confess that it’s funny. It’s no longer a tragedy that we’re acting, but a fairy-tale, as much a fairy-tale as Puss in Boots or Jack and the Beanstalk. I must write it when I get a few weeks to myself: The Magic Stopper; or, The Mishaps of Poor Arsène.”

“Well . . . who has taken it from you?”

“What are you talking about?... It has flown away . . . vanished from my pocket: hey presto, begone!”

He gave the old servant a gentle push and, in a more serious tone:

“Go home, Victoire, and don’t upset yourself. Of course, some one saw you give me the stopper and took advantage of the crowd in the shop to pick my pocket of it. That only shows that we are watched more closely than I thought and by adversaries of the first rank. But, once more, be easy. Honest men always come by their own.... Have you anything else to tell me?”

“Yes. Some one came yesterday evening, while M. Daubrecq was out. I saw lights reflected upon the trees in the garden.”

“The portress’ bedroom?”

“The portress was up.”

“Then it was some of those detective-fellows; they are still hunting. I’ll see you later, Victoire. You must let me in again.”

“What! You want to....”

“What do I risk? Your room is on the third floor. Daubrecq suspects nothing.”

“But the others!”

“The others? If it was to their interest to play me a trick, they’d have tried before now. I’m in their way, that’s all. They’re not afraid of me. So till later, Victoire, at five o’clock exactly.”

One further surprise awaited Lupin. In the evening his old nurse told him that, having opened the drawer of the bedside table from curiosity, she had found the crystal stopper there again.

Lupin was no longer to be excited by these miraculous incidents. He simply said to himself:

“So it’s been brought back. And the person who brought it back and who enters this house by some unexplained means considered, as I did, that the stopper ought not to disappear. And yet Daubrecq, who knows that he is being spied upon to his very bedroom, has once more left the stopper in a drawer, as though he attached no importance to it at all! Now what is one to make of that?”

Though Lupin did not make anything of it, nevertheless he could not escape certain arguments, certain associations of ideas that gave him the same vague foretaste of light which one receives on approaching the outlet of a tunnel.

“It is inevitable, as the case stands,” he thought, “that there must soon be an encounter between myself and the others. From that moment I shall be master of the situation.”

Five days passed, during which Lupin did not glean the slightest particular. On the sixth day Daubrecq received a visit, in the small hours, from a gentleman, Laybach the deputy, who, like his colleagues, dragged himself at his feet in despair and, when all was done, handed him twenty thousand francs.

Two more days; and then, one night, posted on the landing of the second floor, Lupin heard the creaking of a door, the front-door, as he perceived, which led from the hall into the garden. In the darkness he distinguished, or rather divined, the presence of two persons, who climbed the stairs and stopped on the first floor, outside Daubrecq’s bedroom.

What were they doing there? It was not possible to enter the room, because Daubrecq bolted his door every night. Then what were they hoping?

Manifestly, a handiwork of some kind was being performed, as Lupin discovered from the dull sounds of rubbing against the door. Then words, uttered almost beneath a whisper, reached him:

“Is it all right?”

“Yes, quite, but, all the same, we’d better put it off till to-morrow, because....”

Lupin did not hear the end of the sentence. The men were already groping their way downstairs. The hall-door was closed, very gently, and then the gate.

“It’s curious, say what one likes,” thought Lupin. “Here is a house in which Daubrecq carefully conceals his rascalities and is on his guard, not without good reason, against spies; and everybody walks in and out as in a booth at a fair. Victoire lets me in, the portress admits the emissaries of the police: that’s well and good; but who is playing false in these people’s favour? Are we to suppose that they are acting alone? But what fearlessness! And how well they know their way about!”

In the afternoon, during Daubrecq’s absence, he examined the door of the first-floor bedroom. And, at the first glance, he understood: one of the lower panels had been skilfully cut out and was only held in place by invisible tacks. The people, therefore, who had done this work were the same who had acted at his two places, in the Rue Matignon and the Rue Chateaubriand.

He also found that the work dated back to an earlier period and that, as in his case, the opening had been prepared beforehand, in anticipation of favourable circumstances or of some immediate need.

The day did not seem long to Lupin. Knowledge was at hand. Not only would he discover the manner in which his adversaries employed those little openings, which were apparently unemployable, since they did not allow a person to reach the upper bolts, but he would learn who the ingenious and energetic adversaries were with whom he repeatedly and inevitably found himself confronted.

One incident annoyed him. In the evening Daubrecq, who had complained of feeling tired at dinner, came home at ten o’clock and, contrary to his usual custom, pushed the bolts of the hall-door. In that case, how would the others be able to carry out their plan and go to Daubrecq’s room? Lupin waited for an hour after Daubrecq put out his light. Then he went down to the deputy’s study, opened one of the windows ajar and returned to the third floor and fixed his rope-ladder so that, in case of need, he could reach the study without passing though the house. Lastly, he resumed his post on the second-floor landing.

He did not have to wait long. An hour earlier than on the previous night some one tried to open the hall-door. When the attempt failed, a few minutes of absolute silence followed. And Lupin was beginning to think that the men had abandoned the idea, when he gave a sudden start. Some one had passed, without the least sound to interrupt the silence. He would not have known it, so utterly were the thing’s steps deadened by the stair-carpet, if the baluster-rail, which he himself held in his hand, had not shaken slightly. Some one was coming upstairs.

And, as the ascent continued, Lupin became aware of the uncanny feeling that he heard nothing more than before. He knew, because of the rail, that a thing was coming and he could count the number of steps climbed by noting each vibration of the rail; but no other indication gave him that dim sensation of presence which we feel in distinguishing movements which we do not see, in perceiving sounds which we do not hear. And yet a blacker darkness ought to have taken shape within the darkness and something ought, at least, to modify the quality of the silence. No, he might well have believed that there was no one there.

And Lupin, in spite of himself and against the evidence of his reason, ended by believing it, for the rail no longer moved and he thought that he might have been the sport of an illusion.

And this lasted a long time. He hesitated, not knowing what to do, not knowing what to suppose. But an odd circumstance impressed him. A clock struck two. He recognized the chime of Daubrecq’s clock. And the chime was that of a clock from which one is not separated by the obstacle of a door.

Lupin slipped down the stairs and went to the door. It was closed, but there was a space on the left, at the bottom, a space left by the removal of the little panel.

He listened. Daubrecq, at that moment, turned in his bed; and his breathing was resumed, evenly and a little stertorously. And Lupin plainly heard the sound of rumpling garments. Beyond a doubt, the thing was there, fumbling and feeling through the clothes which Daubrecq had laid beside his bed.

“Now,” thought Lupin, “we shall learn something. But how the deuce did the beggar get in? Has he managed to draw the bolts and open the door? But, if so, why did he make the mistake of shutting it again?”

Not for a second—a curious anomaly in a man like Lupin, an anomaly to be explained only by the uncanny feeling which the whole adventure produced in him—not for a second did he suspect the very simple truth which was about to be revealed to him. Continuing his way down, he crouched on one of the bottom steps of the staircase, thus placing himself between the door of the bedroom and the hall-door, on the road which Daubrecq’s enemy must inevitably take in order to join his accomplices.

He questioned the darkness with an unspeakable anguish. He was on the point of unmasking that enemy of Daubrecq’s, who was also his own adversary. He would thwart his plans. And the booty captured from Daubrecq he would capture in his turn, while Daubrecq slept and while the accomplices lurking behind the hall-door or outside the garden-gate vainly awaited their leader’s return.

And that return took place. Lupin knew it by the renewed vibration of the balusters. And, once more, with every sense strained and every nerve on edge, he strove to discern the mysterious thing that was coming toward him. He suddenly realized it when only a few yards away. He himself, hidden in a still darker recess, could not be seen. And what he saw—in the very vaguest manner—was approaching stair by stair, with infinite precautions, holding on to each separate baluster.

“Whom the devil have I to do with?” said Lupin to himself, while his heart thumped inside his chest.

The catastrophe was hastened. A careless movement on Lupin’s part was observed by the stranger, who stopped short. Lupin was afraid lest the other should turn back and take to flight. He sprang at the adversary and was stupefied at encountering nothing but space and knocking against the stair-rail without seizing the form which he saw. But he at once rushed forward, crossed the best part of the hall and caught up his antagonist just as he was reaching the door opening on the garden.

There was a cry of fright, answered by other cries on the further side of the door.

“Oh, hang it, what’s this?” muttered Lupin, whose arms had closed, in the dark, round a little, tiny, trembling, whimpering thing.

Suddenly understanding, he stood for a moment motionless and dismayed, at a loss what to do with his conquered prey. But the others were shouting and stamping outside the door. Thereupon, dreading lest Daubrecq should wake up, he slipped the little thing under his jacket, against his chest, stopped the crying with his handkerchief rolled into a ball and hurried up the three flights of stairs.

“Here, I’ve brought you the indomitable chief of our enemies. Have you a feeding bottle?”

“Here,” he said to Victoire, who woke with a start. “I’ve brought you the indomitable chief of our enemies, the Hercules of the gang. Have you a feeding-bottle about you?”

He put down in the easy-chair a child of six or seven years of age, the tiniest little fellow in a gray jersey and a knitted woollen cap, whose pale and exquisitely pretty features were streaked with the tears that streamed from the terrified eyes.

“Where did you pick that up?” asked Victoire, aghast.

“At the foot of the stairs, as it was coming out of Daubrecq’s bedroom,” replied Lupin, feeling the jersey in the hope that the child had brought a booty of some kind from that room.

Victoire was stirred to pity:

“Poor little dear! Look, he’s trying not to cry!... Oh, saints above, his hands are like ice! Don’t be afraid, sonnie, we sha’n’t hurt you: the gentleman’s all right.”

“Yes,” said Lupin, “the gentleman’s quite all right, but there’s another very wicked gentleman who’ll wake up if they go on making such a rumpus outside the hall-door. Do you hear them, Victoire?”

“Who is it?”

“The satellites of our young Hercules, the indomitable leader’s gang.”

“Well...?” stammered Victoire, utterly unnerved.

“Well, as I don’t want to be caught in the trap, I shall start by clearing out. Are you coming, Hercules?”

He rolled the child in a blanket, so that only its head remained outside, gagged its mouth as gently as possible and made Victoire fasten it to his shoulders:

“See, Hercules? We’re having a game. You never thought you’d find gentlemen to play pick-a-back with you at three o’clock in the morning! Come, whoosh, let’s fly away! You don’t get giddy, I hope?”

He stepped across the window-ledge and set foot on one of the rungs of the ladder. He was in the garden in a minute.

He had never ceased hearing and now heard more plainly still the blows that were being struck upon the front-door. He was astounded that Daubrecq was not awakened by so violent a din:

“If I don’t put a stop to this, they’ll spoil everything,” he said to himself.

He stood in an angle of the house, invisible in the darkness, and measured the distance between himself and the gate. The gate was open. To his right, he saw the steps, on the top of which the people were flinging themselves about; to his left, the building occupied by the portress.

The woman had come out of her lodge and was standing near the people, entreating them:

“Oh, do be quiet, do be quiet! He’ll come!”

“Capital!” said Lupin. “The good woman is an accomplice of these as well. By Jingo, what a pluralist!”

He rushed across to her and, taking her by the scruff of the neck, hissed:

“Go and tell them I’ve got the child.... They can come and fetch it at my place, Rue Chateaubriand.”

A little way off, in the avenue, stood a taxi which Lupin presumed to be engaged by the gang. Speaking authoritatively, as though he were one of the accomplices, he stepped into the cab and told the man to drive him home.

“Well,” he said to the child, “that wasn’t much of a shake-up, was it?... What do you say to going to bye-bye on the gentleman’s bed?”

As his servant, Achille, was asleep, Lupin made the little chap comfortable and stroked his hair for him. The child seemed numbed. His poor face was as though petrified into a stiff expression made up, at one and the same time, of fear and the wish not to show fear, of the longing to scream and a pitiful effort not to scream.

“Cry, my pet, cry,” said Lupin. “It’ll do you good to cry.”

The child did not cry, but the voice was so gentle and so kind that he relaxed his tense muscles; and, now that his eyes were calmer and his mouth less contorted, Lupin, who was examining him closely, found something that he recognized, an undoubted resemblance.

This again confirmed certain facts which he suspected and which he had for some time been linking in his mind. Indeed, unless he was mistaken, the position was becoming very different and he would soon assume the direction of events. After that....

A ring at the bell followed, at once, by two others, sharp ones.

“Hullo!” said Lupin to the child. “Here’s mummy come to fetch you. Don’t move.”

He ran and opened the door.

A woman entered, wildly:

“My son!” she screamed. “My son! Where is he?”

“In my room,” said Lupin.

Without asking more, thus proving that she knew the way, she rushed to the bedroom.

“As I thought,” muttered Lupin. “The youngish woman with the gray hair: Daubrecq’s friend and enemy.”

He walked to the window and looked through the curtains. Two men were striding up and down the opposite pavement: the Growler and the Masher.

“And they’re not even hiding themselves,” he said to himself. “That’s a good sign. They consider that they can’t do without me any longer and that they’ve got to obey the governor. There remains the pretty lady with the gray hair. That will be more difficult. It’s you and I now, mummy.”

He found the mother and the boy clasped in each other’s arms; and the mother, in a great state of alarm, her eyes moist with tears, was saying:

“You’re not hurt? You’re sure? Oh, how frightened you must have been, my poor little Jacques!”

“A fine little fellow,” said Lupin.

She did not reply. She was feeling the child’s jersey, as Lupin had done, no doubt to see if he had succeeded in his nocturnal mission; and she questioned him in a whisper.

“No, mummy,” said the child. “No, really.”

She kissed him fondly and petted him, until, in a little while, the child, worn out with fatigue and excitement, fell asleep. She remained leaning over him for a long time. She herself seemed very much worn out and in need of rest.

Lupin did not disturb her contemplation. He looked at her anxiously, with an attention which she did not perceive, and he noticed the wider rings round her eyes and the deeper marks of wrinkles. Yet he considered her handsomer than he had thought, with that touching beauty which habitual suffering gives to certain faces that are more human, more sensitive than others.

She wore so sad an expression that, in a burst of instinctive sympathy, he went up to her and said: “I do not know what your plans are, but, whatever they may be, you stand in need of help. You cannot succeed alone.”

“I am not alone.”

“The two men outside? I know them. They’re no good. I beseech you, make use of me. You remember the other evening, at the theatre, in the private box? You were on the point of speaking. Do not hesitate to-day.”

She turned her eyes on him, looked at him long and fixedly and, as though unable to escape that opposing will, she said:

“What do you know exactly? What do you know about me?”

“There are many things that I do not know. I do not know your name. But I know....”

She interrupted him with a gesture; and, resolutely, in her turn, dominating the man who was compelling her to speak:

“It doesn’t matter,” she exclaimed. “What you know, after all, is not much and is of no importance. But what are your plans? You offer me your help: with what view? For what work? You have flung yourself headlong into this business; I have been unable to undertake anything without meeting you on my path: you must be contemplating some aim.... What aim?”

“What aim? Upon my word, it seems to me that my conduct....”

“No, no,” she said, emphatically, “no phrases! What you and I want is certainties; and, to achieve them, absolute frankness. I will set you the example. M. Daubrecq possesses a thing of unparalleled value, not in itself, but for what it represents. That thing you know. You have twice held it in your hands. I have twice taken it from you. Well, I am entitled to believe that, when you tried to obtain possession of it, you meant to use the power which you attribute to it and to use it to your own advantage....”

“What makes you say that?”

“Yes, you meant to use it to forward your schemes, in the interest of your own affairs, in accordance with your habits as a....”

“As a burglar and a swindler,” said Lupin, completing the sentence for her.

She did not protest. He tried to read her secret thoughts in the depths of her eyes. What did she want with him? What was she afraid of? If she mistrusted him, had he not also reasons to mistrust that woman who had twice taken the crystal stopper from him to restore it to Daubrecq? Mortal enemy of Daubrecq’s though she were, up to what point did she remain subject to that man’s will? By surrendering himself to her, did he not risk surrendering himself to Daubrecq? And yet he had never looked upon graver eyes nor a more honest face.

Without further hesitation, he stated:

“My object is simple enough. It is the release of my friends Gilbert and Vaucheray.”

“Is that true? Is that true?” she exclaimed, quivering all over and questioning him with an anxious glance.

“If you knew me....”

“I do know you.... I know who you are. For months, I have taken part in your life, without your suspecting it . . . and yet, for certain reasons, I still doubt....”

He said, in a more decisive tone:

“You do not know me. If you knew me, you would know that there can be no peace for me before my two companions have escaped the awful fate that awaits them.”

She rushed at him, took him by the shoulders and positively distraught, said:

“What? What did you say? The awful fate?... Then you believe . . . you believe....”

“I really believe,” said Lupin, who felt how greatly this threat upset her, “I really believe that, if I am not in time, Gilbert and Vaucheray are done for.”

“Be quiet!... Be quiet!” she cried, clutching him fiercely. “You mustn’t say that.”

“Be quiet!... Be quiet!” she cried, clutching him fiercely. “Be quiet!... You mustn’t say that.... There is no reason.... It’s just you who suppose....”

“It’s not only I, it’s Gilbert as well....”

“What? Gilbert? How do you know?”

“From himself?”

“From him?”

“Yes, from Gilbert, who has no hope left but in me; from Gilbert, who knows that only one man in the world can save him and who, a few days ago, sent me a despairing appeal from prison. Here is his letter.”

She snatched the paper greedily and read in stammering accents:

“Help, governor!... I am frightened!... I am frightened!...”

She dropped the letter. Her hands fluttered in space. It was as though her staring eyes beheld the sinister vision which had already so often terrified Lupin. She gave a scream of horror, tried to rise and fainted.

CHAPTER V.

THE TWENTY-SEVEN

The child was sleeping peacefully on the bed. The mother did not move from the sofa on which Lupin had laid her; but her easier breathing and the blood which was now returning to her face announced her impending recovery from her swoon.

He observed that she wore a wedding-ring. Seeing a locket hanging from her bodice, he stooped and, turning it, found a miniature photograph representing a man of about forty and a lad—a stripling rather—in a schoolboy’s uniform. He studied the fresh, young face set in curly hair:

“It’s as I thought,” he said. “Ah, poor woman!”

The hand which he took between his grew warmer by degrees. The eyes opened, then closed again. She murmured:

“Jacques....”

“Do not distress yourself . . . it’s all right he’s asleep.”

She recovered consciousness entirely. But, as she did not speak, Lupin put questions to her, to make her feel a gradual need of unbosoming herself. And he said, pointing to the locket:

“The schoolboy is Gilbert, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” she said.

“And Gilbert is your son?”

She gave a shiver and whispered:

“Yes, Gilbert is my son, my eldest son.”

So she was the mother of Gilbert, of Gilbert the prisoner at the Santé, relentlessly pursued by the authorities and now awaiting his trial for murder!

Lupin continued:

“And the other portrait?”

“My husband.”

“Your husband?”

“Yes, he died three years ago.”

She was now sitting up. Life quivered in her veins once more, together with the horror of living and the horror of all the ghastly things that threatened her. Lupin went on to ask:

“What was your husband’s name?”

She hesitated a moment and answered:

“Mergy.”

He exclaimed:

“Victorien Mergy the deputy?”

“Yes.”

There was a long pause. Lupin remembered the incident and the stir which it had caused. Three years ago, Mergy the deputy had blown out his brains in the lobby of the Chamber, without leaving a word of explanation behind him; and no one had ever discovered the slightest reason for that suicide.

“Do you know the reason?” asked Lupin, completing his thought aloud.

“Yes, I know it.”

“Gilbert, perhaps?”

“No, Gilbert had disappeared for some years, turned out of doors and cursed by my husband. It was a very great sorrow, but there was another motive.”

“What was that?” asked Lupin.

But it was not necessary for Lupin to put further questions. Madame Mergy could keep silent no longer and, slowly at first, with all the anguish of that past which had to be called up, she told her story:

“Twenty-five years ago, when my name was Clarisse Darcel and my parents living, I knew three young men at Nice. Their names will at once give you an insight into the present tragedy: they were Alexis Daubrecq, Victorien Mergy and Louis Prasville. The three were old acquaintances, had gone to college in the same year and served in the same regiment. Prasville, at that time, was in love with a singer at the opera-house at Nice. The two others, Mergy and Daubrecq, were in love with me. I shall be brief as regards all this and, for the rest, as regards the whole story, for the facts tell their own tale. I fell in love with Victorien Mergy from the first. Perhaps I was wrong not to declare myself at once. But true love is always timid, hesitating and shy; and I did not announce my choice until I felt quite certain and quite free. Unfortunately, that period of waiting, so delightful for those who cherish a secret passion, had permitted Daubrecq to hope. His anger was something horrible.”

Clarisse Mergy stopped for a few seconds and resumed, in a stifled voice:

“I shall never forget it.... The three of us were in the drawing-room. Oh, I can hear even now the terrible words of threat and hatred which he uttered! Victorien was absolutely astounded. He had never seen his friend like this, with that repugnant face, that bestial expression: yes, the expression of a wild beast.... Daubrecq ground his teeth. He stamped his feet. His bloodshot eyes—he did not wear spectacles in those days—rolled in their sockets; and he kept on saying, ‘I shall be revenged.... I shall be revenged.... Oh, you don’t know what I am capable of!... I shall wait ten years, twenty years, if necessary.... But it will come like a thunderbolt.... Ah, you don’t know!... To be revenged.... To do harm . . . for harm’s sake... what joy! I was born to do harm.... And you will both beseech my mercy on your knees, on your knees, yes, on your knees....’ At that moment, my father entered the room; and, with his assistance and the footman’s, Victorien Mergy flung the loathsome creature out of doors. Six weeks later, I married Victorien.”

“And Daubrecq?” asked Lupin, interrupting her. “Did he not try....”

“No, but on our wedding-day, Louis Prasville, who acted as my husband’s best man in defiance of Daubrecq’s opposition, went home to find the girl he loved, the opera-singer, dead, strangled....”

“What!” said Lupin, with a start. “Had Daubrecq....”

“It was known that Daubrecq had been persecuting her with his attentions for some days; but nothing more was known. It was impossible to discover who had gone in or out during Prasville’s absence. There was not a trace found of any kind: nothing, absolutely nothing.”

“But Prasville....”

“There was no doubt of the truth in Prasville’s mind or ours. Daubrecq had tried to run away with the girl, perhaps tried to force her, to hustle her and, in the course of the struggle, maddened, losing his head, caught her by the throat and killed her, perhaps without knowing what he was doing. But there was no evidence of all this; and Daubrecq was not even molested.”

“And what became of him next?”

“For some years we heard nothing of him. We knew only that he had lost all his money gambling and that he was travelling in America. And, in spite of myself, I forgot his anger and his threats and was only too ready to believe that he had ceased to love me and no longer harboured his schemes of revenge. Besides, I was so happy that I did not care to think of anything but my happiness, my love, my husband’s political career, the health of my son Antoine.”

“Antoine?”

“Yes, Antoine is Gilbert’s real name. The unhappy boy has at least succeeded in concealing his identity.”

Lupin asked, with some hesitation:

“At what period did . . . Gilbert . . . begin?”

“I cannot tell you exactly. Gilbert—I prefer to call him that and not to pronounce his real name—Gilbert, as a child, was what he is to-day: lovable, liked by everybody, charming, but lazy and unruly. When he was fifteen, we put him to a boarding-school in one of the suburbs, with the deliberate object of not having him too much at home. After two years’ time he was expelled from school and sent back to us.”

“Why?”

“Because of his conduct. The masters had discovered that he used to slip out at night and also that he would disappear for weeks at a time, while pretending to be at home with us.”

“What used he to do?”

“Amuse himself backing horses, spending his time in cafés and public dancing-rooms.”

“Then he had money?”

“Yes.”

“Who gave it him?”

“His evil genius, the man who, secretly, unknown to his parents, enticed him away from school, the man who led him astray, who corrupted him, who took him from us, who taught him to lie, to waste his substance and to steal.”

“Daubrecq?”

“Daubrecq.”

Clarisse Mergy put her hands together to hide the blushes on her forehead. She continued, in her tired voice:

“Daubrecq had taken his revenge. On the day after my husband turned our unhappy child out of the house, Daubrecq sent us a most cynical letter in which he revealed the odious part which he had played and the machinations by which he had succeeded in depraving our son. And he went on to say, ‘The reformatory, one of these days.... Later on, the assize-court.... And then, let us hope and trust, the scaffold!’”

Lupin exclaimed:

“What! Did Daubrecq plot the present business?”

“No, no, that is only an accident. The hateful prophecy was just a wish which he expressed. But oh, how it terrified me! I was ailing at the time; my other son, my little Jacques, had just been born. And every day we heard of some fresh misdeed of Gilbert’s—forgeries, swindles—so much so that we spread the news, in our immediate surroundings, of his departure for abroad, followed by his death. Life was a misery; and it became still more so when the political storm burst in which my husband was to meet his death.”

“What do you mean?”

“A word will be enough: my husband’s name was on the list of the Twenty-seven.”

“Ah!”

The veil was suddenly lifted from Lupin’s eyes and he saw, as in a flash of lightning, a whole legion of things which, until then, had been hidden in the darkness.

Clarisse Mergy continued, in a firmer voice:

“Yes, his name was on it, but by mistake, by a piece of incredible ill-luck of which he was the victim. It is true that Victorien Mergy was a member of the committee appointed to consider the question of the Two-Seas Canal. It is true that he voted with the members who were in favour of the company’s scheme. He was even paid—yes, I tell you so plainly and I will mention the sum—he was paid fifteen thousand francs. But he was paid on behalf of another, of one of his political friends, a man in whom he had absolute confidence and of whom he was the blind, unconscious tool. He thought he was showing his friend a kindness; and it proved his own undoing. It was not until the day after the suicide of the chairman of the company and the disappearance of the secretary, the day on which the affair of the canal was published in the papers, with its whole series of swindles and abominations, that my husband knew that a number of his fellow-members had been bribed and learnt that the mysterious list, of which people suddenly began to speak, mentioned his name with theirs and with the names of other deputies, leaders of parties and influential politicians. Oh, what awful days those were! Would the list be published? Would his name come out? The torture of it! You remember the mad excitement in the Chamber, the atmosphere of terror and denunciation that prevailed. Who owned the list? Nobody could say. It was known to be in existence and that was all. Two names were sacrificed to public odium. Two men were swept away by the storm. And it remained unknown where the denunciation came from and in whose hands the incriminating documents were.”

“Daubrecq,” suggested Lupin.

“No, no!” cried Madame Mergy. “Daubrecq was nothing at that time: he had not yet appeared upon the scene. No, don’t you remember, the truth came out suddenly through the very man who was keeping it back: Germineaux, the ex-minister of justice, a cousin of the chairman of the Canal Company. As he lay dying of consumption, he wrote from his sick-bed to the prefect of police, bequeathing him that list of names, which, he said, would be found, after his death, in an iron chest in the corner of his room. The house was surrounded by police and the prefect took up his quarters by the sick man’s bedside. Germineaux died. The chest was opened and found to be empty.”

“Daubrecq, this time,” Lupin declared.

“Yes, Daubrecq,” said Madame Mergy, whose excitement was momentarily increasing. “Alexis Daubrecq, who, for six months, disguised beyond recognition, had acted as Germineaux’s secretary. It does not matter how he discovered that Germineaux was the possessor of the paper in question. The fact remains that he broke open the chest on the night before the death. So much was proved at the inquiry; and Daubrecq’s identity was established.”

“But he was not arrested?”

“What would have been the use? They knew well enough that he must have deposited the list in a place of safety. His arrest would have involved a scandal, the reopening of the whole case....”

“So....”

“So they made terms.”

Lupin laughed:

“That’s funny, making terms with Daubrecq!”

“Yes, very funny,” said Madame Mergy, bitterly. “During this time he acted and without delay, shamelessly, making straight for the goal. A week after the theft, he went to the Chamber of Deputies, asked for my husband and bluntly demanded thirty thousand francs of him, to be paid within twenty-four hours. If not, he threatened him with exposure and disgrace. My husband knew the man he was dealing with, knew him to be implacable and filled with relentless hatred. He lost his head and shot himself.”

“How absurd!” Lupin could not help saying. “How absurd! Daubrecq possesses a list of twenty-seven names. To give up any one of those names he is obliged, if he would have his accusation believed, to publish the list itself—that is to say, to part with the document, or at least a photograph of it. Well, in so doing, he creates a scandal, it is true, but he deprives himself, at the same time, of all further means of levying blackmail.”

“Yes and no,” she said.

“How do you know?”

“Through Daubrecq himself. The villain came to see me and cynically told me of his interview with my husband and the words that had passed between them. Well, there is more than that list, more than that famous bit of paper on which the secretary put down the names and the amounts paid and to which, you will remember, the chairman of the company, before dying, affixed his signature in letters of blood. There is more than that. There are certain less positive proofs, which the people interested do not know of: the correspondence between the chairman and the secretary, between the chairman and his counsel, and so on. Of course, the list scribbled on the bit of paper is the only evidence that counts; it is the one incontestable proof which it would be no good copying or even photographing, for its genuineness can be tested most absolutely. But, all the same, the other proofs are dangerous. They have already been enough to do away with two deputies. And Daubrecq is marvelously clever at turning this fact to account. He selects his victim, frightens him out of his senses, points out to him the inevitable scandal; and the victim pays the required sum. Or else he kills himself, as my husband did. Do you understand now?”

“Yes,” said Lupin.

And, in the silence that followed, he drew a mental picture of Daubrecq’s life. He saw him the owner of that list, using his power, gradually emerging from the shadow, lavishly squandering the money which he extorted from his victims, securing his election as a district-councillor and deputy, holding sway by dint of threats and terror, unpunished, invulnerable, unattackable, feared by the government, which would rather submit to his orders than declare war upon him, respected by the judicial authorities: so powerful, in a word, that Prasville had been appointed secretary-general of police, over the heads of all who had prior claims, for the sole reason that he hated Daubrecq with a personal hatred.

“And you saw him again?” he asked.

“I saw him again. I had to. My husband was dead, but his honour remained untouched. Nobody suspected the truth. In order at least to defend the name which he left me, I accepted my first interview with Daubrecq.”

“Your first, yes, for there have been others.”

“Many others,” she said, in a strained voice, “yes, many others . . . at the theatre . . . or in the evening, at Enghien . . . or else in Paris, at night . . . for I was ashamed to meet that man and I did not want people to know it.... But it was necessary.... A duty more imperative than any other commanded it: the duty of avenging my husband....”

She bent over Lupin and, eagerly:

“Yes, revenge has been the motive of my conduct and the sole preoccupation of my life. To avenge my husband, to avenge my ruined son, to avenge myself for all the harm that he has done me: I had no other dream, no other object in life. That is what I wanted: to see that man crushed, reduced to poverty, to tears—as though he still knew how to cry!—sobbing in the throes of despair....”

“You wanted his death,” said Lupin, remembering the scene between them in Daubrecq’s study.

“No, not his death. I have often thought of it, I have even raised my arm to strike him, but what would have been the good? He must have taken his precautions. The paper would remain. And then there is no revenge in killing a man.... My hatred went further than that.... It demanded his ruin, his downfall; and, to achieve that, there was but one way: to cut his claws. Daubrecq, deprived of the document that gives him his immense power, ceases to exist. It means immediate bankruptcy and disaster . . . under the most wretched conditions. That is what I have sought.”

“But Daubrecq must have been aware of your intentions?”

“Certainly. And, I assure you, those were strange meetings of ours: I watching him closely, trying to guess his secret behind his actions and his words, and he . . . he....”

“And he,” said Lupin, finishing Clarisse’s thought, “lying in wait for the prey which he desires . . . for the woman whom he has never ceased to love . . . whom he loves . . . and whom he covets with all his might and with all his furious passion....”

She lowered her head and said, simply:

“Yes.”

A strange duel indeed was that which brought face to face those two beings separated by so many implacable things! How unbridled must Daubrecq’s passion be for him to risk that perpetual threat of death and to introduce to the privacy of his house this woman whose life he had shattered! But also how absolutely safe he must feel himself!

“And your search ended . . . how?” asked Lupin.

“My search,” she replied, “long remained without fruit. You know the methods of investigation which you have followed and which the police have followed on their side. Well, I myself employed them, years before either of you did, and in vain. I was beginning to despair. Then, one day, when I had gone to see Daubrecq in his villa at Enghien, I picked up under his writing-table a letter which he had begun to write, crumpled up and thrown into the waste-paper-basket. It consisted of a few lines in bad English; and I was able to read this: ‘Empty the crystal within, so as to leave a void which it is impossible to suspect.’ Perhaps I should not have attached to this sentence all the importance which it deserved, if Daubrecq, who was out in the garden, had not come running in and begun to turn out the waste-paper-basket, with an eagerness which was very significant. He gave me a suspicious look: ‘There was a letter there,’ he said. I pretended not to understand. He did not insist, but his agitation did not escape me; and I continued my quest in this direction. A month later, I discovered, among the ashes in the drawing-room fireplace, the torn half of an English invoice. I gathered that a Stourbridge glass-blower, of the name of John Howard, had supplied Daubrecq with a crystal bottle made after a model. The word ‘crystal’ struck me at once. I went to Stourbridge, got round the foreman of the glass-works and learnt that the stopper of this bottle had been hollowed out inside, in accordance with the instruction in the order, so as to leave a cavity, the existence of which would escape observation.”

Lupin nodded his head:

“The thing tallies beyond a doubt. Nevertheless, it did not seem to me, that, even under the gilt layer.... And then the hiding-place would be very tiny!”

“Tiny, but large enough,” she said. “On my return from England, I went to the police-office to see Prasville, whose friendship for me had remained unchanged. I did not hesitate to tell him, first, the reasons which had driven my husband to suicide and, secondly, the object of revenge which I was pursuing. When I informed him of my discoveries, he jumped for joy; and I felt that his hatred for Daubrecq was as strong as ever. I learnt from him that the list was written on a slip of exceedingly thin foreign-post-paper, which, when rolled up into a sort of pellet, would easily fit into an exceedingly limited space. Neither he nor I had the least hesitation. We knew the hiding-place. We agreed to act independently of each other, while continuing to correspond in secret. I put him in touch with Clémence, the portress in the Square Lamartine, who was entirely devoted to me....”

“But less so to Prasville,” said Lupin, “for I can prove that she betrays him.”

“Now perhaps, but not at the start; and the police searches were numerous. It was at that time, ten months ago, that Gilbert came into my life again. A mother never loses her love for her son, whatever he may do, whatever he may have done. And then Gilbert has such a way with him . . . well, you know him. He cried, kissed my little Jacques, his brother and I forgave him.”

She stopped and, weary-voiced, with her eyes fixed on the floor, continued:

“Would to Heaven that I had not forgiven him! Ah, if that hour could but return, how readily I should find the horrible courage to turn him away! My poor child . . . it was I who ruined him!...” And, pensively, “I should have had that or any sort of courage, if he had been as I pictured him to myself and as he himself told me that he had long been: bearing the marks of vice and dissipation, coarse, deteriorated.... But, though he was utterly changed in appearance, so much so that I could hardly recognize him, there was, from the point of view of—how shall I put it?—from the moral point of view, an undoubted improvement. You had helped him, lifted him; and, though his mode of life was hateful to me, nevertheless he retained a certain self-respect . . . a sort of underlying decency that showed itself on the surface once more.... He was gay, careless, happy.... And he used to talk of you with such affection!”

She picked her words, betraying her embarrassment, not daring, in Lupin’s presence, to condemn the line of life which Gilbert had selected and yet unable to speak in favour of it.

“What happened next?” asked Lupin.

“I saw him very often. He would come to me by stealth, or else I went to him and we would go for walks in the country. In this way, I was gradually induced to tell him our story, of his father’s suicide and the object which I was pursuing. He at once took fire. He too wanted to avenge his father and, by stealing the crystal stopper, to avenge himself on Daubrecq for the harm which he had done him. His first idea—from which, I am bound to tell you, he never swerved—was to arrange with you.”

“Well, then,” cried Lupin, “he ought to have....!”

“Yes, I know . . . and I was of the same opinion. Unfortunately, my poor Gilbert—you know how weak he is!—was under the influence of one of his comrades.”

“Vaucheray?”

“Yes, Vaucheray, a saturnine spirit, full of bitterness and envy, an ambitious, unscrupulous, gloomy, crafty man, who had acquired a great empire over my son. Gilbert made the mistake of confiding in him and asking his advice. That was the origin of all the mischief. Vaucheray convinced him and convinced me as well that it would be better if we acted by ourselves. He studied the business, took the lead and finally organized the Enghien expedition and, under your direction, the burglary at the Villa Marie-Thérèse, which Prasville and his detectives had been unable to search thoroughly, because of the active watch maintained by Léonard the valet. It was a mad scheme. We ought either to have trusted in your experience entirely, or else to have left you out altogether, taking the risk of fatal mistakes and dangerous hesitations. But we could not help ourselves. Vaucheray ruled us. I agreed to meet Daubrecq at the theatre. During this time the thing took place. When I came home, at twelve o’clock at night, I heard the terrible result: Léonard murdered, my son arrested. I at once received an intuition of the future. Daubrecq’s appalling prophecy was being realized: it meant trial and sentence. And this through my fault, through the fault of me, the mother, who had driven my son toward the abyss from which nothing could extricate him now.”

Clarisse wrung her hands and shivered from head to foot. What suffering can compare with that of a mother trembling for the head of her son? Stirred with pity, Lupin said:

“We shall save him. Of that there is not the shadow of a doubt. But, it is necessary that I should know all the details. Finish your story, please. How did you know, on the same night, what had happened at Enghien?”

She mastered herself and, with a face wrung with fevered anguish, replied:

“Through two of your accomplices, or rather two accomplices of Vaucheray, to whom they were wholly devoted and who had chosen them to row the boats.”

“The two men outside: the Growler and the Masher?”

“Yes. On your return from the villa, when you landed after being pursued on the lake by the commissary of police, you said a few words to them, by way of explanation, as you went to your car. Mad with fright, they rushed to my place, where they had been before, and told me the hideous news. Gilbert was in prison! Oh, what an awful night! What was I to do? Look for you? Certainly; and implore your assistance. But where was I to find you?... It was then that the two whom you call the Growler and the Masher, driven into a corner by circumstances, decided to tell me of the part played by Vaucheray, his ambitions, his plan, which had long been ripening....”

“To get rid of me, I suppose?” said Lupin, with a grin.

“Yes. As Gilbert possessed your complete confidence, Vaucheray watched him and, in this way, got to know all the places which you live at. A few days more and, owning the crystal stopper, holding the list of the Twenty-seven, inheriting all Daubrecq’s power, he would have delivered you to the police, without compromising a single member of your gang, which he looked upon as thenceforth his.”

“The ass!” muttered Lupin. “A muddler like that!” And he added, “So the panels of the doors....”

“Were cut out by his instructions, in anticipation of the contest on which he was embarking against you and against Daubrecq, at whose house he did the same thing. He had under his orders a sort of acrobat, an extraordinarily thin dwarf, who was able to wriggle through those apertures and who thus detected all your correspondence and all your secrets. That is what his two friends revealed to me. I at once conceived the idea of saving my elder son by making use of his brother, my little Jacques, who is himself so slight and so intelligent, so plucky, as you have seen. We set out that night. Acting on the information of my companions, I went to Gilbert’s rooms and found the keys of your flat in the Rue Matignon, where it appeared that you were to sleep. Unfortunately, I changed my mind on the way and thought much less of asking for your help than of recovering the crystal stopper, which, if it had been discovered at Enghien, must obviously be at your flat. I was right in my calculations. In a few minutes, my little Jacques, who had slipped into your bedroom, brought it to me. I went away quivering with hope. Mistress in my turn of the talisman, keeping it to myself, without telling Prasville, I had absolute power over Daubrecq. I could make him do all that I wanted; he would become the slave of my will and, instructed by me, would take every step in Gilbert’s favour and obtain that he should be given the means of escape or else that he should not be sentenced. It meant my boy’s safety.”

“Well?”

Clarisse rose from her seat, with a passionate movement of her whole being, leant over Lupin and said, in a hollow voice:

“There was nothing in that piece of crystal, nothing, do you understand? No paper, no hiding-place! The whole expedition to Enghien was futile! The murder of Léonard was useless! The arrest of my son was useless! All my efforts were useless!”

“But why? Why?”

“Why? Because what you stole from Daubrecq was not the stopper made by his instructions, but the stopper which was sent to John Howard, the Stourbridge glassworker, to serve as a model.”

If Lupin had not been in the presence of so deep a grief, he could not have refrained from one of those satirical outbursts with which the mischievous tricks of fate are wont to inspire him. As it was, he muttered between his teeth:

“How stupid! And still more stupid as Daubrecq had been given the warning.”

“No,” she said. “I went to Enghien on the same day. In all that business Daubrecq saw and sees nothing but an ordinary burglary, an annexation of his treasures. The fact that you took part in it put him off the scent.”

“Still, the disappearance of the stopper....”

“To begin with, the thing can have had but a secondary importance for him, as it is only the model.”

“How do you know?”

“There is a scratch at the bottom of the stem; and I have made inquiries in England since.”

“Very well; but why did the key of the cupboard from which it was stolen never leave the man-servant’s possession? And why, in the second place, was it found afterward in the drawer of a table in Daubrecq’s house in Paris?”

“Of course, Daubrecq takes care of it and clings to it in the way in which one clings to the model of any valuable thing. And that is why I replaced the stopper in the cupboard before its absence was noticed. And that also is why, on the second occasion, I made my little Jacques take the stopper from your overcoat-pocket and told the portress to put it back in the drawer.”

“Then he suspects nothing?”

“Nothing. He knows that the list is being looked for, but he does not know that Prasville and I are aware of the thing in which he hides it.”

Lupin had risen from his seat and was walking up and down the room, thinking. Then he stood still beside Clarisse and asked:

“When all is said, since the Enghien incident, you have not advanced a single step?”

“Not one. I have acted from day to day, led by those two men or leading them, without any definite plan.”

“Or, at least,” he said, “without any other plan than that of getting the list of the Twenty-seven from Daubrecq.”

“Yes, but how? Besides, your tactics made things more difficult for me. It did not take us long to recognize your old servant Victoire in Daubrecq’s new cook and to discover, from what the portress told us, that Victoire was putting you up in her room; and I was afraid of your schemes.”

“It was you, was it not, who wrote to me to retire from the contest?”

“Yes.”

“You also asked me not to go to the theatre on the Vaudeville night?”

“Yes, the portress caught Victoire listening to Daubrecq’s conversation with me on the telephone; and the Masher, who was watching the house, saw you go out. I suspected, therefore, that you would follow Daubrecq that evening.”

“And the woman who came here, late one afternoon....”

“Was myself. I felt disheartened and wanted to see you.”

“And you intercepted Gilbert’s letter?”

“Yes, I recognized his writing on the envelope.”

“But your little Jacques was not with you?”

“No, he was outside, in a motor-car, with the Masher, who lifted him up to me through the drawing-room window; and he slipped into your bedroom through the opening in the panel.”

“What was in the letter?”

“As ill-luck would have it, reproaches. Gilbert accused you of forsaking him, of taking over the business on your own account. In short, it confirmed me in my distrust; and I ran away.”

Lupin shrugged his shoulders with irritation:

“What a shocking waste of time! And what a fatality that we were not able to come to an understanding earlier! You and I have been playing at hide-and-seek, laying absurd traps for each other, while the days were passing, precious days beyond repair.”

“You see, you see,” she said, shivering, “you too are afraid of the future!”

“No, I am not afraid,” cried Lupin. “But I am thinking of all the useful work that we could have done by this time, if we had united our efforts. I am thinking of all the mistakes and all the acts of imprudence which we should have been saved, if we had been working together. I am thinking that your attempt to-night to search the clothes which Daubrecq was wearing was as vain as the others and that, at this moment, thanks to our foolish duel, thanks to the din which we raised in his house, Daubrecq is warned and will be more on his guard than ever.”

Clarisse Mergy shook her head:

“No, no, I don’t think that; the noise will not have roused him, for we postponed the attempt for twenty-four hours so that the portress might put a narcotic in his wine.” And she added, slowly, “And then, you see, nothing can make Daubrecq be more on his guard than he is already. His life is nothing but one mass of precautions against danger. He leaves nothing to chance.... Besides, has he not all the trumps in his hand?”

Lupin went up to her and asked:

“What do you mean to convey? According to you, is there nothing to hope for on that side? Is there not a single means of attaining our end?”

“Yes,” she murmured, “there is one, one only....”

He noticed her pallor before she had time to hide her face between her hands again. And again a feverish shiver shook her frame.

He seemed to understand the reason of her dismay; and, bending toward her, touched by her grief:

“Please,” he said, “please answer me openly and frankly. It’s for Gilbert’s sake, is it not? Though the police, fortunately, have not been able to solve the riddle of his past, though the real name of Vaucheray’s accomplice has not leaked out, there is one man, at least, who knows it: isn’t that so? Daubrecq has recognized your son Antoine, through the alias of Gilbert, has he not?”

“Yes, yes....”

“And he promises to save him, doesn’t he? He offers you his freedom, his release, his escape, his life: that was what he offered you, was it not, on the night in his study, when you tried to stab him?”

“Yes . . . yes . . . that was it....”

“And he makes one condition, does he not? An abominable condition, such as would suggest itself to a wretch like that? I am right, am I not?”

Clarisse did not reply. She seemed exhausted by her protracted struggle with a man who was gaining ground daily and against whom it was impossible for her to fight. Lupin saw in her the prey conquered in advance, delivered to the victor’s whim. Clarisse Mergy, the loving wife of that Mergy whom Daubrecq had really murdered, the terrified mother of that Gilbert whom Daubrecq had led astray, Clarisse Mergy, to save her son from the scaffold, must, come what may and however ignominious the position, yield to Daubrecq’s wishes. She would be the mistress, the wife, the obedient slave of Daubrecq, of that monster with the appearance and the ways of a wild beast, that unspeakable person of whom Lupin could not think without revulsion and disgust.

Sitting down beside her, gently, with gestures of pity, he made her lift her head and, with his eyes on hers, said:

“Listen to me. I swear that I will save your son: I swear it.... Your son shall not die, do you understand?... There is not a power on earth that can allow your son’s head to be touched as long as I am alive.”

“I believe you.... I trust your word.”

“Do. It is the word of a man who does not know defeat. I shall succeed. Only, I entreat you to make me an irrevocable promise.”

“What is that?”

“You must not see Daubrecq again.”

“I swear it.”

“You must put from your mind any idea, any fear, however obscure, of an understanding between yourself and him . . . of any sort of bargain....”

“I swear it.”

She looked at him with an expression of absolute security and reliance; and he, under her gaze, felt the joy of devotion and an ardent longing to restore that woman’s happiness, or, at least, to give her the peace and oblivion that heal the worst wounds:

“Come,” he said, in a cheerful tone, rising from his chair, “all will yet be well. We have two months, three months before us. It is more than I need . . . on condition, of course, that I am unhampered in my movements. And, for that, you will have to withdraw from the contest, you know.”

“How do you mean?”

“Yes, you must disappear for a time; go and live in the country. Have you no pity for your little Jacques? This sort of thing would end by shattering the poor little man’s nerves.... And he has certainly earned his rest, haven’t you, Hercules?”

---

The next day Clarisse Mergy, who was nearly breaking down under the strain of events and who herself needed repose, lest she should fall seriously ill, went, with her son, to board with a friend who had a house on the skirt of the Forest of Saint-Germain. She felt very weak, her brain was haunted by visions and her nerves were upset by troubles which the least excitement aggravated. She lived there for some days in a state of physical and mental inertia, thinking of nothing and forbidden to see the papers.

One afternoon, while Lupin, changing his tactics, was working out a scheme for kidnapping and confining Daubrecq; while the Growler and the Masher, whom he had promised to forgive if he succeeded, were watching the enemy’s movements; while the newspapers were announcing the forthcoming trial for murder of Arsène Lupin’s two accomplices, one afternoon, at four o’clock, the telephone-bell rang suddenly in the flat in the Rue Chateaubriand.

Lupin took down the receiver:

“Hullo!”

A woman’s voice, a breathless voice, said:

“M. Michel Beaumont?”

“You are speaking to him, madame. To whom have I the honour....”

“Quick, monsieur, come at once; Madame Mergy has taken poison.”

Lupin did not wait to hear details. He rushed out, sprang into his motor-car and drove to Saint-Germain.

Clarisse’s friend was waiting for him at the door of the bedroom.

“Dead?” he asked.

“No,” she replied, “she did not take sufficient. The doctor has just gone. He says she will get over it.”

“And why did she make the attempt?”

“Her son Jacques has disappeared.”

“Carried off?”

“Yes, he was playing just inside the forest. A motor-car was seen pulling up. Then there were screams. Clarisse tried to run, but her strength failed and she fell to the ground, moaning, ‘It’s he . . . it’s that man . . . all is lost!’ She looked like a madwoman.”

“Suddenly, she put a little bottle to her lips and swallowed the contents.”

“What happened next?”

“My husband and I carried her to her room. She was in great pain.”

“How did you know my address, my name?”

“From herself, while the doctor was attending to her. Then I telephoned to you.”

“Has any one else been told?”

“No, nobody. I know that Clarisse has had terrible things to bear . . . and that she prefers not to be talked about.”

“Can I see her?”

“She is asleep just now. And the doctor has forbidden all excitement.”

“Is the doctor anxious about her?”

“He is afraid of a fit of fever, any nervous strain, an attack of some kind which might cause her to make a fresh attempt on her life. And that would be....”

“What is needed to avoid it?”

“A week or a fortnight of absolute quiet, which is impossible as long as her little Jacques....”

Lupin interrupted her:

“You think that, if she got her son back....”

“Oh, certainly, there would be nothing more to fear!”

“You’re sure? You’re sure?... Yes, of course you are!... Well, when Madame Mergy wakes, tell her from me that I will bring her back her son this evening, before midnight. This evening, before midnight: it’s a solemn promise.”

With these words, Lupin hurried out of the house and, stepping into his car, shouted to the driver:

“Go to Paris, Square Lamartine, Daubrecq the deputy’s!”

CHAPTER VI.

THE DEATH-SENTENCE

Lupin’s motor-car was not only an office, a writing-room furnished with books, stationery, pens and ink, but also a regular actor’s dressing-room, containing a complete make-up box, a trunk filled with every variety of wearing-apparel, another crammed with “properties”—umbrellas, walking-sticks, scarves, eye-glasses and so on—in short, a complete set of paraphernalia which enabled him to alter his appearance from top to toe in the course of a drive.

The man who rang at Daubrecq the deputy’s gate, at six o-clock that evening, was a stout, elderly gentleman, in a black frock-coat, a bowler hat, spectacles and whiskers.

The portress took him to the front-door of the house and rang the bell. Victoire appeared.

Lupin asked:

“Can M. Daubrecq see Dr. Vernes?”

“M. Daubrecq is in his bedroom; and it is rather late....”

“Give him my card, please.”

He wrote the words, “From Mme. Mergy,” in the margin and added:

“There, he is sure to see me.”

“But . . .” Victoire began.

“Oh, drop your buts, old dear, do as I say, and don’t make such a fuss about it!”

She was utterly taken aback and stammered:

“You! . . . is it you?”

“No, it’s Louis XIV.!” And, pushing her into a corner of the hall, “Listen.... The moment I’m done with him, go up to your room, put your things together anyhow and clear out.”

“What!”

“Do as I tell you. You’ll find my car waiting down the avenue. Come, stir your stumps! Announce me. I’ll wait in the study.”

“But it’s dark in there.”

“Turn on the light.”

She switched on the electric light and left Lupin alone.

“It’s here,” he reflected, as he took a seat, “it’s here that the crystal stopper lives.... Unless Daubrecq always keeps it by him.... But no, when people have a good hiding-place, they make use of it. And this is a capital one; for none of us . . . so far....”

Concentrating all his attention, he examined the objects in the room; and he remembered the note which Daubrecq wrote to Prasville:

“Within reach of your hand, my dear Prasville!... You touched it! A little more and the trick was done....”

Nothing seemed to have moved since that day. The same things were lying about on the desk: books, account-books, a bottle of ink, a stamp-box, pipes, tobacco, things that had been searched and probed over and over again.

“The bounder!” thought Lupin. “He’s organized his business jolly cleverly. It’s all dove-tailed like a well-made play.”

In his heart of hearts, though he knew exactly what he had come to do and how he meant to act, Lupin was thoroughly aware of the danger and uncertainty attending his visit to so powerful an adversary. It was quite within the bounds of possibility that Daubrecq, armed as he was, would remain master of the field and that the conversation would take an absolutely different turn from that which Lupin anticipated.

And this prospect angered him somewhat.

He drew himself up, as he heard a sound of footsteps approaching.

Daubrecq entered.

He entered without a word, made a sign to Lupin, who had risen from his chair, to resume his seat and himself sat down at the writing-desk. Glancing at the card which he held in his hand:

“Dr. Vernes?”

“Yes, monsieur le député, Dr. Vernes, of Saint-Germain.”

“And I see that you come from Mme. Mergy. A patient of yours?”

“A recent patient. I did not know her until I was called in to see her, the other day, in particularly tragic circumstances.”

“Is she ill?”

“Mme. Mergy has taken poison.”

“What!”

Daubrecq gave a start and he continued, without concealing his distress:

“What’s that you say? Poison! Is she dead?”

“No, the dose was not large enough. If no complications ensue, I consider that Mme. Mergy’s life is saved.”

Daubrecq said nothing and sat silent, with his head turned to Lupin.

“Is he looking at me? Are his eyes open or shut?” Lupin asked himself.

It worried Lupin terribly not to see his adversary’s eyes, those eyes hidden by the double obstacle of spectacles and black glasses: weak, bloodshot eyes, Mme. Mergy had told him. How could he follow the secret train of the man’s thought without seeing the expression of his face? It was almost like fighting an enemy who wielded an invisible sword.

Presently, Daubrecq spoke:

“So Mme. Mergy’s life is saved.... And she has sent you to me.... I don’t quite understand.... I hardly know the lady.”

“Now for the ticklish moment,” thought Lupin. “Have at him!”

And, in a genial, good-natured and rather shy tone, he said:

“No, monsieur le député, there are cases in which a doctor’s duty becomes very complex . . . very puzzling.... And you may think that, in taking this step.... However, to cut a long story short, while I was attending Mme. Mergy, she made a second attempt to poison herself.... Yes; the bottle, unfortunately, had been left within her reach. I snatched it from her. We had a struggle. And, railing in her fever, she said to me, in broken words, ‘He’s the man.... He’s the man.... Daubrecq the deputy.... Make him give me back my son. Tell him to . . . or else I would rather die.... Yes, now, to-night.... I would rather die.’ That’s what she said, monsieur le député.... So I thought that I ought to let you know. It is quite certain that, in the lady’s highly nervous state of mind.... Of course, I don’t know the exact meaning of her words.... I asked no questions of anybody . . . obeyed a spontaneous impulse and came straight to you.”

Daubrecq reflected for a little while and said:

“It amounts to this, doctor, that you have come to ask me if I know the whereabouts of this child whom I presume to have disappeared. Is that it?”

“Yes.”

“And, if I did happen to know, you would take him back to his mother?”

There was a longer pause. Lupin asked himself:

“Can he by chance have swallowed the story? Is the threat of that death enough? Oh, nonsense it’s out of the question!... And yet . . . and yet . . . he seems to be hesitating.”

“Will you excuse me?” asked Daubrecq, drawing the telephone, on his writing-desk, toward him. “I have an urgent message.”

“Certainly, monsieur le député.”

Daubrecq called out:

“Hullo!... 822.19, please, 822.19.”

Having repeated the number, he sat without moving.

Lupin smiled:

“The headquarters of police, isn’t it? The secretary-general’s office....”

“Yes, doctor.... How do you know?”

“Oh, as a divisional surgeon, I sometimes have to ring them up.”

And, within himself, Lupin asked:

“What the devil does all this mean? The secretary-general is Prasville.... Then, what?...”

Daubrecq put both receivers to his ears and said:

“Are you 822.19? I want to speak to M. Prasville, the secretary-general.... Do you say he’s not there?... Yes, yes, he is: he’s always in his office at this time.... Tell him it’s M. Daubrecq.... M. Daubrecq the deputy . . . a most important communication.”

“Perhaps I’m in the way?” Lupin suggested.

“Not at all, doctor, not at all,” said Daubrecq. “Besides, what I have to say has a certain bearing on your errand.” And, into the telephone, “Hullo! M. Prasville?... Ah, it’s you, Prasville, old cock!... Why, you seem quite staggered! Yes, you’re right, it’s an age since you and I met. But, after all, we’ve never been far away in thought.... And I’ve had plenty of visits from you and your henchmen.... In my absence, it’s true. Hullo!.... What?... Oh, you’re in a hurry? I beg your pardon!... So am I, for that matter.... Well, to come to the point, there’s a little service I want to do you.... Wait, can’t you, you brute?... You won’t regret it.... It concerns your renown.... Hullo!... Are you listening?... Well, take half-a-dozen men with you . . . plain-clothes detectives, by preference: you’ll find them at the night-office.... Jump into a taxi, two taxis, and come along here as fast as you can.... I’ve got a rare quarry for you, old chap. One of the upper ten . . . a lord, a marquis Napoleon himself . . . in a word, Arsène Lupin!”

Lupin sprang to his feet. He was prepared for every upshot except this.

Lupin sprang to his feet. He was prepared for everything but this. Yet something within him stronger than astonishment, an impulse of his whole nature, made him say, with a laugh:

“Oh, well done, well done!”

Daubrecq bowed his head, by way of thanks, and muttered:

“I haven’t quite finished.... A little patience, if you don’t mind.” And he continued, “Hullo! Prasville!... No, no, old chap, I’m not humbugging.... You’ll find Lupin here, with me, in my study.... Lupin, who’s worrying me like the rest of you.... Oh, one more or less makes no difference to me! But, all the same, this one’s a bit too pushing. And I am appealing to your sense of kindness. Rid me of the fellow, do.... Half-a-dozen of your satellites and the two who are pacing up and down outside my house will be enough.... Oh, while you’re about it, go up to the third floor and rope in my cook as well.... She’s the famous Victoire: you know, Master Lupin’s old nurse.... And, look here, one more tip, to show you how I love you: send a squad of men to the Rue Chateaubriand, at the corner of the Rue Balzac.... That’s where our national hero lives, under the name of Michel Beaumont.... Do you twig, old cockalorum? And now to business. Hustle!”

When Daubrecq turned his head, Lupin was standing up, with clenched fists. His burst of admiration had not survived the rest of the speech and the revelations which Daubrecq had made about Victoire and the flat in the Rue Chateaubriand. The humiliation was too great; and Lupin no longer bothered to play the part of the small general practitioner. He had but one idea in his head: not to give way to the tremendous fit of rage that was urging him to rush at Daubrecq like a bull.

Daubrecq gave the sort of little cluck which, with him, did duty for a laugh. He came waddling up, with his hands in his trouser-pockets, and said, incisively:

“Don’t you think that this is all for the best? I’ve cleared the ground, relieved the situation.... At least, we now know where we stand. Lupin versus Daubrecq; and that’s all about it. Besides, think of the time saved! Dr. Vernes, the divisional surgeon, would have taken two hours to spin his yarn! Whereas, like this, Master Lupin will be compelled to get his little story told in thirty minutes . . . unless he wants to get himself collared and his accomplices nabbed. What a shock! What a bolt from the blue! Thirty minutes and not a minute more. In thirty minutes from now, you’ll have to clear out, scud away like a hare and beat a disordered retreat. Ha, ha, ha, what fun! I say, Polonius, you really are unlucky, each time you come up against Bibi Daubrecq! For it was you who were hiding behind that curtain, wasn’t it, my ill-starred Polonius?”

Lupin did not stir a muscle. The one and only solution that would have calmed his feelings, that is to say, for him to throttle his adversary then and there, was so absurd that he preferred to accept Daubrecq’s gibes without attempting to retort, though each of them cut him like the lash of a whip. It was the second time, in the same room and in similar circumstances, that he had to bow before that Daubrecq of misfortune and maintain the most ridiculous attitude in silence. And he felt convinced in his innermost being that, if he opened his mouth, it would be to spit words of anger and insult in his victor’s face. What was the good? Was it not essential that he should keep cool and do the things which the new situation called for?

“Well, M. Lupin, well?” resumed the deputy. “You look as if your nose were out of joint. Come, console yourself and admit that one sometimes comes across a joker who’s not quite such a mug as his fellows. So you thought that, because I wear spectacles and eye-glasses, I was blind? Bless my soul, I don’t say that I at once suspected Lupin behind Polonius and Polonius behind the gentleman who came and bored me in the box at the Vaudeville. No, no! But, all the same, it worried me. I could see that, between the police and Mme. Mergy, there was a third bounder trying to get a finger in the pie. And, gradually, what with the words let fall by the portress, what with watching the movements of my cook and making inquiries about her in the proper quarter, I began to understand. Then, the other night, came the lightning-flash. I heard the row in the house, in spite of my being asleep. I managed to reconstruct the incident, to follow up Mme. Mergy’s traces, first, to the Rue Chateaubriand and, afterward, to Saint-Germain.... And then . . . what then? I put different facts together: the Enghien burglary.... Gilbert’s arrest . . . the inevitable treaty of alliance between the weeping mother and the leader of the gang... the old nurse installed as cook . . . all these people entering my house through the doors or through the windows.... And I knew what I had to do. Master Lupin was sniffing at the secret. The scent of the Twenty-seven attracted him. I had only to wait for his visit. The hour has arrived. Good-evening, Master Lupin.”

Daubrecq paused. He had delivered his speech with the evident satisfaction of a man entitled to claim the appreciation of the most captious critics.

As Lupin did not speak, he took out his watch: “I say! Only twenty-three minutes! How time flies! At this rate, we sha’n’t have time to come to an explanation.” And, stepping still closer to Lupin, “I’m bound to say, I’m disappointed. I thought that Lupin was a different sort of gentleman. So, the moment he meets a more or less serious adversary, the colossus falls to pieces? Poor young man! Have a glass of water, to bring you round!” Lupin did not utter a word, did not betray a gesture of irritation. With absolute composure, with a precision of movement that showed his perfect self-control and the clear plan of conduct which he had adopted, he gently pushed Daubrecq aside, went to the table and, in his turn, took down the receiver of the telephone:

“I want 565.34, please,” he said.

He waited until he was through; and then, speaking in a slow voice and picking out every syllable, he said:

“Hullo!.... Rue Chateaubriand?... Is that you, Achille?... Yes, it’s the governor. Listen to me carefully, Achille.... You must leave the flat! Hullo!... Yes, at once. The police are coming in a few minutes. No, no, don’t lose your head.... You’ve got time. Only, do what I tell you. Is your bag still packed?... Good. And is one of the sides empty, as I told you?... Good. Well, go to my bedroom and stand with your face to the chimney-piece. Press with your left hand on the little carved rosette in front of the marble slab, in the middle, and with your right hand on the top of the mantel-shelf. You’ll see a sort of drawer, with two little boxes in it. Be careful. One of them contains all our papers; the other, bank-notes and jewellery. Put them both in the empty compartment of the bag. Take the bag in your hand and go as fast as you can, on foot, to the corner of the Avenue Victor-Hugo and the Avenue de Montespan. You’ll find the car waiting, with Victoire. I’ll join you there.... What?... My clothes? My knick-knacks?... Never mind about all that.... You be off. See you presently.”

Lupin quietly pushed away the telephone. Then, taking Daubrecq by the arm, he made him sit in a chair by his side and said:

“And now listen to me, Daubrecq.”

“Oho!” grinned the deputy. “Calling each other by our surnames, are we?”

“Yes,” said Lupin, “I allowed you to.” And, when Daubrecq released his arm with a certain misgiving, he said, “No, don’t be afraid. We sha’n’t come to blows. Neither of us has anything to gain by doing away with the other. A stab with a knife? What’s the good? No, sir! Words, nothing but words. Words that strike home, though. Here are mine: they are plain and to the point. Answer me in the same way, without reflecting: that’s far better. The boy?”

“I have him.”

“Give him back.”

“No.”

“Mme. Mergy will kill herself.”

“No, she won’t.”

“I tell you she will.”

“And I tell you she will not.”

“But she’s tried to, once.”

“That’s just the reason why she won’t try again.”

“Well, then....”

“No.”

Lupin, after a moment, went on:

“I expected that. Also, I thought, on my way here, that you would hardly tumble to the story of Dr. Vernes and that I should have to use other methods.”

“Lupin’s methods.”

“As you say. I had made up my mind to throw off the mask. You pulled it off for me. Well done you! But that doesn’t change my plans.”

“Speak.”

Lupin took from a pocketbook a double sheet of foolscap paper, unfolded it and handed it to Daubrecq, saying:

“Here is an exact, detailed inventory, with consecutive numbers, of the things removed by my friends and myself from your Villa Marie-Thérèse on the Lac d’Enghien. As you see, there are one hundred and thirteen items. Of those one hundred and thirteen items, sixty-eight, which have a red cross against them, have been sold and sent to America. The remainder, numbering forty-five, are in my possession . . . until further orders. They happen to be the pick of the bunch. I offer you them in return for the immediate surrender of the child.”

Daubrecq could not suppress a movement of surprise:

“Oho!” he said. “You seem very much bent upon it.”

“Infinitely,” said Lupin, “for I am persuaded that a longer separation from her son will mean death to Mme. Mergy.”

“And that upsets you, does it . . . Lothario?”

“What!”

Lupin planted himself in front of the other and repeated:

“What! What do you mean?”

“Nothing.... Nothing.... Something that crossed my mind.... Clarisse Mergy is a young woman still and a pretty woman at that.”

Lupin shrugged his shoulders:

“You brute!” he mumbled. “You imagine that everybody is like yourself, heartless and pitiless. It takes your breath away, what, to think that a shark like me can waste his time playing the Don Quixote? And you wonder what dirty motive I can have? Don’t try to find out: it’s beyond your powers of perception. Answer me, instead: do you accept?”

“So you’re serious?” asked Daubrecq, who seemed but little disturbed by Lupin’s contemptuous tone.

“Absolutely. The forty-five pieces are in a shed, of which I will give you the address, and they will be handed over to you, if you call there, at nine o’clock this evening, with the child.”

There was no doubt about Daubrecq’s reply. To him, the kidnapping of little Jacques had represented only a means of working upon Clarisse Mergy’s feelings and perhaps also a warning for her to cease the contest upon which she had engaged. But the threat of a suicide must needs show Daubrecq that he was on the wrong track. That being so, why refuse the favourable bargain which Arsène Lupin was now offering him?

“I accept,” he said.

“Here’s the address of my shed: 99, Rue Charles-Lafitte, Neuilly. You have only to ring the bell.”

“And suppose I send Prasville, the secretary-general, instead?”

“If you send Prasville,” Lupin declared, “the place is so arranged that I shall see him coming and that I shall have time to escape, after setting fire to the trusses of hay and straw which surround and conceal your credence-tables, clocks and Gothic virgins.”

“But your shed will be burnt down....”

“I don’t mind that: the police have their eye on it already. I am leaving it in any case.”

“And how am I to know that this is not a trap?”

“Begin by receiving the goods and don’t give up the child till afterward. I trust you, you see.”

“Good,” said Daubrecq; “you’ve foreseen everything. Very well, you shall have the nipper; the fair Clarisse shall live; and we will all be happy. And now, if I may give you a word of advice, it is to pack off as fast as you can.”

“Not yet.”

“Eh?”

“I said, not yet.”

“But you’re mad! Prasville’s on his way!”

“He can wait. I’ve not done.”

“Why, what more do you want? Clarisse shall have her brat. Isn’t that enough for you?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“There is another son.”

“Gilbert.”

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“I want you to save Gilbert.”

“What are you saying? I save Gilbert!”

“You can, if you like; it only means taking a little trouble.” Until that moment Daubrecq had remained quite calm. He now suddenly blazed out and, striking the table with his fist:

“No,” he cried, “not that! Never! Don’t reckon on me!... No, that would be too idiotic!”

He walked up and down, in a state of intense excitement, with that queer step of his, which swayed him from right to left on each of his legs, like a wild beast, a heavy, clumsy bear. And, with a hoarse voice and distorted features, he shouted:

“Let her come here! Let her come and beg for her son’s pardon! But let her come unarmed, not with criminal intentions, like last time! Let her come as a supplicant, as a tamed woman, as a submissive woman, who understands and accepts the situation . . . Gilbert? Gilbert’s sentence? The scaffold? Why, that is where my strength lies! What! For more than twenty years have I awaited my hour; and, when that hour strikes, when fortune brings me this unhoped-for chance, when I am at last about to know the joy of a full revenge—and such a revenge!—you think that I will give it up, give up the thing which I have been pursuing for twenty years? I save Gilbert? I? For nothing? For love? I, Daubrecq?... No, no, you can’t have studied my features!”

He laughed, with a fierce and hateful laugh. Visibly, he saw before him, within reach of his hand, the prey which he had been hunting down so long. And Lupin also summoned up the vision of Clarisse, as he had seen her several days before, fainting, already beaten, fatally conquered, because all the hostile powers were in league against her.

He contained himself and said:

“Listen to me.”

And, when Daubrecq moved away impatiently, he took him by the two shoulders, with that superhuman strength which Daubrecq knew, from having felt it in the box at the Vaudeville, and, holding him motionless in his grip, he said:

“One last word.”

“You’re wasting your breath,” growled the deputy.

“One last word. Listen, Daubrecq: forget Mme. Mergy, give up all the nonsensical and imprudent acts which your pride and your passions are making you commit; put all that on one side and think only of your interest....”

“My interest,” said Daubrecq, jestingly, “always coincides with my pride and with what you call my passions.”

“Up to the present, perhaps. But not now, not now that I have taken a hand in the business. That constitutes a new factor, which you choose to ignore. You are wrong. Gilbert is my pal. Gilbert is my chum. Gilbert has to be saved from the scaffold. Use your influence to that end, and I swear to you, do you hear, I swear that we will leave you in peace. Gilbert’s safety, that’s all I ask. You will have no more battles to wage with Mme. Mergy, with me; there will be no more traps laid for you. You will be the master, free to act as you please. Gilbert’s safety, Daubrecq! If you refuse....”

“What then?”

“If you refuse, it will be war, relentless war; in other words, a certain defeat for you.”

“Meaning thereby....”

“Meaning thereby that I shall take the list of the Twenty-seven from you.”

“Rot! You think so, do you?”

“I swear it.”

“What Prasville and all his men, what Clarisse Mergy, what nobody has been able to do, you think that you will do!”

“I shall!”

“And why? By favour of what saint will you succeed where everybody else has failed? There must be a reason?”

“There is.”

“What is it?”

“My name is Arsène Lupin.”

He had let go of Daubrecq, but held him for a time under the dominion of his authoritative glance and will. At last, Daubrecq drew himself up, gave him a couple of sharp taps on the shoulder and, with the same calm, the same intense obstinacy, said:

“And my name’s Daubrecq. My whole life has been one desperate battle, one long series of catastrophes and routs in which I spent all my energies until victory came: complete, decisive, crushing, irrevocable victory. I have against me the police, the government, France, the world. What difference do you expect it to make to me if I have M. Arsène Lupin against me into the bargain? I will go further: the more numerous and skilful my enemies, the more cautiously I am obliged to play. And that is why, my dear sir, instead of having you arrested, as I might have done—yes, as I might have done and very easily—I let you remain at large and beg charitably to remind you that you must quit in less than three minutes.”

“Then the answer is no?”

“The answer is no.”

“You won’t do anything for Gilbert?”

“Yes, I shall continue to do what I have been doing since his arrest—that is to say, to exercise indirect influence with the minister of justice, so that the trial may be hurried on and end in the way in which I want to see it end.”

“What!” cried Lupin, beside himself with indignation. “It’s because of you, it’s for you....”

“Yes, it’s for me, Daubrecq; yes, by Jove! I have a trump card, the son’s head, and I am playing it. When I have procured a nice little death-sentence for Gilbert, when the days go by and Gilbert’s petition for a reprieve is rejected by my good offices, you shall see, M. Lupin, that his mummy will drop all her objections to calling herself Mme. Alexis Daubrecq and giving me an unexceptionable pledge of her good-will. That fortunate issue is inevitable, whether you like it or not. It is foredoomed. All I can do for you is to invite you to the wedding and the breakfast. Does that suit you? No? You persist in your sinister designs? Well, good luck, lay your traps, spread your nets, rub up your weapons and grind away at the Complete Foreign-post-paper Burglar’s Handbook. You’ll need it. And now, good-night. The rules of open-handed and disinterested hospitality demand that I should turn you out of doors. Hop it!”

Lupin remained silent for some time. With his eyes fixed on Daubrecq, he seemed to be taking his adversary’s size, gauging his weight, estimating his physical strength, discussing, in fine, in which exact part to attack him. Daubrecq clenched his fists and worked out his plan of defence to meet the attack when it came.

Half a minute passed. Lupin put his hand to his hip-pocket. Daubrecq did the same and grasped the handle of his revolver.

A few seconds more. Coolly, Lupin produced a little gold box of the kind that ladies use for holding sweets, opened it and handed it to Daubrecq:

“A lozenge?”

“What’s that?” asked the other, in surprise.

“Cough-drops.”

“What for?”

“For the draught you’re going to feel!”

And, taking advantage of the momentary fluster into which Daubrecq was thrown by his sally, he quickly took his hat and slipped away.

“Of course,” he said, as he crossed the hall, “I am knocked into fits. But all the same, that bit of commercial-traveller’s waggery was rather novel, in the circumstances. To expect a pill and receive a cough-drop is by way of being a sort of disappointment. It left the old chimpanzee quite flummoxed.”

As he closed the gate, a motor-car drove up and a man sprang out briskly, followed by several others.

Lupin recognized Prasville:

“Monsieur le secrétaire;-général,” he muttered, “your humble servant. I have an idea that, some day, fate will bring us face to face: and I am sorry, for your sake; for you do not inspire me with any particular esteem and you have a bad time before you, on that day. Meanwhile, if I were not in such a hurry, I should wait till you leave and I should follow Daubrecq to find out in whose charge he has placed the child whom he is going to hand back to me. But I am in a hurry. Besides, I can’t tell that Daubrecq won’t act by telephone. So let us not waste ourselves in vain efforts, but rather join Victoire, Achille and our precious bag.”

Two hours later, Lupin, after taking all his measures, was on the lookout in his shed at Neuilly and saw Daubrecq turn out of an adjoining street and walk along with a distrustful air.

Lupin himself opened the double doors:

“Your things are in here, monsieur le député,” he said. “You can go round and look. There is a job-master’s yard next door: you have only to ask for a van and a few men. Where is the child?”

Daubrecq first inspected the articles and then took Lupin to the Avenue de Neuilly, where two closely veiled old ladies stood waiting with little Jacques.

Lupin carried the child to his car, where Victoire was waiting for him.

All this was done swiftly, without useless words and as though the parts had been got by heart and the various movements settled in advance, like so many stage entrances and exits.

At ten o’clock in the evening Lupin kept his promise and handed little Jacques to his mother. But the doctor had to be hurriedly called in, for the child, upset by all those happenings, showed great signs of excitement and terror. It was more than a fortnight before he was sufficiently recovered to bear the strain of the removal which Lupin considered necessary. Mme. Mergy herself was only just fit to travel when the time came. The journey took place at night, with every possible precaution and under Lupin’s escort.

He took the mother and son to a little seaside place in Brittany and entrusted them to Victoire’s care and vigilance.

“At last,” he reflected, when he had seen them settled, “there is no one between the Daubrecq bird and me. He can do nothing more to Mme. Mergy and the kid; and she no longer runs the risk of diverting the struggle through her intervention. By Jingo, we have made blunders enough! First, I have had to disclose myself to Daubrecq. Secondly, I have had to surrender my share of the Enghien movables. True, I shall get those back, sooner or later; of that there is not the least doubt. But, all the same, we are not getting on; and, in a week from now, Gilbert and Vaucheray will be up for trial.”

What Lupin felt most in the whole business was Daubrecq’s revelation of the whereabouts of the flat. The police had entered his place in the Rue Chateaubriand. The identity of Lupin and Michel Beaumont had been recognized and certain papers discovered; and Lupin, while pursuing his aim, while, at the same time, managing various enterprises on which he had embarked, while avoiding the searches of the police, which were becoming more zealous and persistent than ever, had to set to work and reorganize his affairs throughout on a fresh basis.

His rage with Daubrecq, therefore, increased in proportion to the worry which the deputy caused him. He had but one longing, to pocket him, as he put it, to have him at his bidding by fair means or foul, to extract his secret from him. He dreamt of tortures fit to unloose the tongue of the most silent of men. The boot, the rack, red-hot pincers, nailed planks: no form of suffering, he thought, was more than the enemy deserved; and the end to be attained justified every means.

“Oh,” he said to himself, “oh, for a decent bench of inquisitors and a couple of bold executioners!... What a time we should have!”

Every afternoon the Growler and the Masher watched the road which Daubrecq took between the Square Lamartine, the Chamber of Deputies and his club. Their instructions were to choose the most deserted street and the most favourable moment and, one evening, to hustle him into a motor-car.

Lupin, on his side, got ready an old building, standing in the middle of a large garden, not far from Paris, which presented all the necessary conditions of safety and isolation and which he called the Monkey’s Cage.

Unfortunately, Daubrecq must have suspected something, for every time, so to speak, he changed his route, or took the underground or a tram; and the cage remained unoccupied.

Lupin devised another plan. He sent to Marseilles for one of his associates, an elderly retired grocer called Brindebois, who happened to live in Daubrecq’s electoral district and interested himself in politics. Old Brindebois wrote to Daubrecq from Marseilles, announcing his visit. Daubrecq gave this important constituent a hearty welcome, and a dinner was arranged for the following week.

The elector suggested a little restaurant on the left bank of the Seine, where the food, he said, was something wonderful. Daubrecq accepted.

This was what Lupin wanted. The proprietor of the restaurant was one of his friends. The attempt, which was to take place on the following Thursday, was this time bound to succeed.

Meanwhile, on the Monday of the same week, the trial of Gilbert and Vaucheray opened.

---

The reader will remember—and the case took place too recently for me to recapitulate its details—the really incomprehensible partiality which the presiding judge showed in his cross-examination of Gilbert. The thing was noticed and severely criticised at the time. Lupin recognized Daubrecq’s hateful influence.

The attitude observed by the two prisoners differed greatly. Vaucheray was gloomy, silent, hard-faced. He cynically, in curt, sneering, almost defiant phrases, admitted the crimes of which he had formerly been guilty. But, with an inconsistency which puzzled everybody except Lupin, he denied any participation in the murder of Léonard the valet and violently accused Gilbert. His object, in thus linking his fate with Gilbert’s, was to force Lupin to take identical measures for the rescue of both his accomplices.

Gilbert, on the other hand, whose frank countenance and dreamy, melancholy eyes won every sympathy, was unable to protect himself against the traps laid for him by the judge or to counteract Vaucheray’s lies. He burst into tears, talked too much, or else did not talk when he should have talked. Moreover, his counsel, one of the Leaders of the bar, was taken ill at the last moment—and here again Lupin saw the hand of Daubrecq—and he was replaced by a junior who spoke badly, muddied the whole case, set the jury against him and failed to wipe out the impression produced by the speeches of the advocate-general and of Vaucheray’s counsel.

Lupin, who had the inconceivable audacity to be present on the last day of the trial, the Thursday, had no doubt as to the result. A verdict of guilty was certain in both cases.

It was certain because all the efforts of the prosecution, thus supporting Vaucheray’s tactics, had tended to link the two prisoners closely together. It was certain, also and above all, because it concerned two of Lupin’s accomplices. From the opening of the inquiry before the magistrate until the delivery of the verdict, all the proceedings had been directed against Lupin; and this in spite of the fact that the prosecution, for want of sufficient evidence and also in order not to scatter its efforts over too wide an area, had decided not to include Lupin in the indictment. He was the adversary aimed at, the leader who must be punished in the person of his friends, the famous and popular scoundrel whose fascination in the eyes of the crowd must be destroyed for good and all. With Gilbert and Vaucheray executed, Lupin’s halo would fade away and the legend would be exploded.

Lupin.... Lupin.... Arsène Lupin: it was the one name heard throughout the four days. The advocate-general, the presiding judge, the jury, the counsel, the witnesses had no other words on their lips. Every moment, Lupin was mentioned and cursed at, scoffed at, insulted and held responsible for all the crimes committed. It was as though Gilbert and Vaucheray figured only as supernumeraries, while the real criminal undergoing trial was he, Lupin, Master Lupin, Lupin the burglar, the leader of a gang of thieves, the forger, the incendiary, the hardened offender, the ex-convict, Lupin the murderer, Lupin stained with the blood of his victim, Lupin lurking in the shade, like a coward, after sending his friends to the foot of the scaffold.

“Oh, the rascals know what they’re about!” he muttered. “It’s my debt which they are making my poor old Gilbert pay.”

And the terrible tragedy went on.

At seven o’clock in the evening, after a long deliberation, the jury returned to court and the foreman read out the answers to the questions put from the bench. The answer was “Yes” to every count of the indictment, a verdict of guilty without extenuating circumstances.

The prisoners were brought in. Standing up, but staggering and white-faced, they received their sentence of death.

And, amid the great, solemn silence, in which the anxiety of the onlookers was mingled with pity, the assize-president asked:

“Have you anything more to say, Vaucheray?”

“Nothing, monsieur le president. Now that my mate is sentenced as well as myself, I am easy.... We are both on the same footing.... The governor must find a way to save the two of us.”

“The governor?”

“Yes, Arsène Lupin.”

There was a laugh among the crowd.

The president asked:

“And you, Gilbert?”

Tears streamed down the poor lad’s cheeks and he stammered a few inarticulate sentences. But, when the judge repeated his question, he succeeded in mastering himself and replied, in a trembling voice:

“I wish to say, monsieur le president, that I am guilty of many things, that’s true.... I have done a lot of harm.... But, all the same, not this. No, I have not committed murder.... I have never committed murder.... And I don’t want to die.... it would be too horrible....”

He swayed from side to side, supported by the warders, and he was heard to cry, like a child calling for help:

“Governor.... save me!... Save me!... I don’t want to die!”

Then, in the crowd, amid the general excitement, a voice rose above the surrounding clamour:

“Don’t be afraid, little ‘un!... The governor’s here!”

A tumult and hustling followed. The municipal guards and the policemen rushed into court and laid hold of a big, red-faced man, who was stated by his neighbours to be the author of that outburst and who struggled hand and foot.

Questioned without delay, he gave his name, Philippe Bonel, an undertaker’s man, and declared that some one sitting beside him had offered him a hundred-franc note if he would consent, at the proper moment, to shout a few words which his neighbour scribbled on a bit of paper. How could he refuse?

In proof of his statements, he produced the hundred-franc note and the scrap of paper.

Philippe Bonel was let go.

Meanwhile, Lupin, who of course had assisted energetically in the individual’s arrest and handed him over to the guards, left the law-courts, his heart heavy with anguish. His car was waiting for him on the quay. He flung himself into it, in despair, seized with so great a sorrow that he had to make an effort to restrain his tears. Gilbert’s cry, his voice wrung with affliction, his distorted features, his tottering frame: all this haunted his brain; and he felt as if he would never, for a single second, forget those impressions.

He drove home to the new place which he had selected among his different residences and which occupied a corner of the Place de Clichy. He expected to find the Growler and the Masher, with whom he was to kidnap Daubrecq that evening. But he had hardly opened the door of his flat, when a cry escaped him: Clarisse stood before him; Clarisse, who had returned from Brittany at the moment of the verdict.

“What we have to do is to stop the mischief and to-night, you understand, to-night the thing will be done.”

He at once gathered from her attitude and her pallor that she knew. And, at once, recovering his courage in her presence, without giving her time to speak, he exclaimed:

“Yes, yes, yes . . . but it doesn’t matter. We foresaw that. We couldn’t prevent it. What we have to do is to stop the mischief. And to-night, you understand, to-night, the thing will be done.”

Motionless and tragic in her sorrow, she stammered:

“To-night?”

“Yes. I have prepared everything. In two hours, Daubrecq will be in my hands. To-night, whatever means I have to employ, he shall speak.”

“Do you mean that?” she asked, faintly, while a ray of hope began to light up her face.

“He shall speak. I shall have his secret. I shall tear the list of the Twenty-seven from him. And that list will set your son free.”

“Too late,” Clarisse murmured.

“Too late? Why? Do you think that, in exchange for such a document, I shall not obtain Gilbert’s pretended escape?... Why, Gilbert will be at liberty in three days! In three days....”

He was interrupted by a ring at the bell:

“Listen, here are our friends. Trust me. Remember that I keep my promises. I gave you back your little Jacques. I shall give you back Gilbert.”

He went to let the Growler and the Masher in and said:

“Is everything ready? Is old Brindebois at the restaurant? Quick, let us be off!”

“It’s no use, governor,” replied the Masher.

“No use? What do you mean?”

“There’s news.”

“What news? Speak, man!”

“Daubrecq has disappeared.”

“Eh? What’s that? Daubrecq disappeared?”

“Yes, carried off from his house, in broad daylight.”

“The devil! By whom?”

“Nobody knows . . . four men . . . there were pistols fired.... The police are on the spot. Prasville is directing the investigations.”

Lupin did not move a limb. He looked at Clarisse Mergy, who lay huddled in a chair.

He himself had to bow his head. Daubrecq carried off meant one more chance of success lost....

CHAPTER VII.

THE PROFILE OF NAPOLEON

Soon as the prefect of police, the chief of the criminal-investigation department and the examining-magistrates had left Daubrecq’s house, after a preliminary and entirely fruitless inquiry, Prasville resumed his personal search.

He was examining the study and the traces of the struggle which had taken place there, when the portress brought him a visiting-card, with a few words in pencil scribbled upon it.

“Show the lady in,” he said.

“The lady has some one with her,” said the portress.

“Oh? Well, show the other person in as well.”

Clarisse Mergy entered at once and introduced the gentleman with her, a gentleman in a black frock-coat, which was too tight for him and which looked as though it had not been brushed for ages. He was shy in his manner and seemed greatly embarrassed how to dispose of his old, rusty top-hat, his gingham umbrella, his one and only glove and his body generally.

“M. Nicole,” said Clarisse, “a private teacher, who is acting as tutor to my little Jacques. M. Nicole has been of the greatest help to me with his advice during the past year. He worked out the whole story of the crystal stopper. I should like him, as well as myself—if you see no objection to telling me—to know the details of this kidnapping business, which alarms me and upsets my plans; yours too, I expect?”

Prasville had every confidence in Clarisse Mergy. He knew her relentless hatred of Daubrecq and appreciated the assistance which she had rendered in the case. He therefore made no difficulties about telling her what he knew, thanks to certain clues and especially to the evidence of the portress.

For that matter, the thing was exceedingly simple. Daubrecq, who had attended the trial of Gilbert and Vaucheray as a witness and who was seen in court during the speeches, returned home at six o’clock. The portress affirmed that he came in alone and that there was nobody in the house at the time. Nevertheless, a few minutes later, she heard shouts, followed by the sound of a struggle and two pistol-shots; and from her lodge she saw four masked men scuttle down the front steps, carrying Daubrecq the deputy, and hurry toward the gate. They opened the gate. At the same moment, a motor-car arrived outside the house. The four men bundled themselves into it; and the motor-car, which had hardly had time to stop, set off at full speed.

“Were there not always two policemen on duty?” asked Clarisse.

“They were there,” said Prasville, “but at a hundred and fifty yards’ distance; and Daubrecq was carried off so quickly that they were unable to interfere, although they hastened up as fast as they could.”

“And did they discover nothing, find nothing?”

“Nothing, or hardly anything.... Merely this.”

“What is that?”

“A little piece of ivory, which they picked up on the ground. There was a fifth party in the car; and the portress saw him get down while the others were hoisting Daubrecq in. As he was stepping back into the car, he dropped something and picked it up again at once. But the thing, whatever it was, must have been broken on the pavement; for this is the bit of ivory which my men found.”

“But how did the four men manage to enter the house?” asked Clarisse.

“By means of false keys, evidently, while the portress was doing her shopping, in the course of the afternoon; and they had no difficulty in secreting themselves, as Daubrecq keeps no other servants. I have every reason to believe that they hid in the room next door, which is the dining-room, and afterward attacked Daubrecq here, in the study. The disturbance of the furniture and other articles proves how violent the struggle was. We found a large-bore revolver, belonging to Daubrecq, on the carpet. One of the bullets had smashed the glass over the mantel-piece, as you see.”

Clarisse turned to her companion for him to express an opinion. But M. Nicole, with his eyes obstinately lowered, had not budged from his chair and sat fumbling at the rim of his hat, as though he had not yet found a proper place for it.

Prasville gave a smile. It was evident that he did not look upon Clarisse’s adviser as a man of first-rate intelligence:

“The case is somewhat puzzling, monsieur,” he said, “is it not?”

“Yes . . . yes,” M. Nicole confessed, “most puzzling.”

“Then you have no little theory of your own upon the matter?”

“Well, monsieur le secrétaire;-général, I’m thinking that Daubrecq has many enemies.”

“Ah, capital!”

“And that several of those enemies, who are interested in his disappearance, must have banded themselves against him.”

“Capital, capital!” said Prasville, with satirical approval. “Capital! Everything is becoming clear as daylight. It only remains for you to furnish us with a little suggestion that will enable us to turn our search in the right direction.”

“Don’t you think, monsieur le secrétaire;-général, that this broken bit of ivory which was picked up on the ground....”

“No, M. Nicole, no. That bit of ivory belongs to something which we do not know and which its owner will at once make it his business to conceal. In order to trace the owner, we should at least be able to define the nature of the thing itself.”

M. Nicole reflected and then began:

“Monsieur le secrétaire;-général, when Napoleon I fell from power....”

“Oh, M. Nicole, oh, a lesson in French history!”

“Only a sentence, monsieur le secrétaire;-général, just one sentence which I will ask your leave to complete. When Napoleon I fell from power, the Restoration placed a certain number of officers on half-pay. These officers were suspected by the authorities and kept under observation by the police. They remained faithful to the emperor’s memory; and they contrived to reproduce the features of their idol on all sorts of objects of everyday use; snuff-boxes, rings, breast-pins, pen-knives and so on.”

“Well?”

“Well, this bit comes from a walking-stick, or rather a sort of loaded cane, or life-preserver, the knob of which is formed of a piece of carved ivory. When you look at the knob in a certain way, you end by seeing that the outline represents the profile of the Little Corporal. What you have in your hand, monsieur le secrétaire;-général, is a bit of the ivory knob at the top of a half-pay officer’s life-preserver.”

“Yes,” said Prasville, examining the exhibit, “yes, I can make out a profile . . . but I don’t see the inference....”

“The inference is very simple. Among Daubrecq’s victims, among those whose names are inscribed on the famous list, is the descendant of a Corsican family in Napoleon’s service, which derived its wealth and title from the emperor and was afterward ruined under the Restoration. It is ten to one that this descendant, who was the leader of the Bonapartist party a few years ago, was the fifth person hiding in the motor-car. Need I state his name?”

“The Marquis d’Albufex?” said Prasville.

“The Marquis d’Albufex,” said M. Nicole.

M. Nicole, who no longer seemed in the least worried with his hat, his glove and his umbrella, rose and said to Prasville:

“Monsieur le secrétaire;-général, I might have kept my discovery to myself, and not told you of it until after the final victory, that is, after bringing you the list of the Twenty-seven. But matters are urgent. Daubrecq’s disappearance, contrary to what his kidnappers expect, may hasten on the catastrophe which you wish to avert. We must therefore act with all speed. Monsieur le secrétaire;-général, I ask for your immediate and practical assistance.”

“In what way can I help you?” asked Prasville, who was beginning to be impressed by his quaint visitor.

“By giving me, to-morrow, those particulars about the Marquis d’Albufex which it would take me personally several days to collect.”

Prasville seemed to hesitate and turned his head toward Mme. Mergy. Clarisse said:

“I beg of you to accept M. Nicole’s services. He is an invaluable and devoted ally. I will answer for him as I would for myself.”

“What particulars do you require, monsieur?” asked Prasville.

“Everything that concerns the Marquis d’Albufex: the position of his family, the way in which he spends his time, his family connections, the properties which he owns in Paris and in the country.”

Prasville objected:

“After all, whether it’s the marquis or another, Daubrecq’s kidnapper is working on our behalf, seeing that, by capturing the list, he disarms Daubrecq.”

“And who says, monsieur le secrétaire;-général, that he is not working on his own behalf?”

“That is not possible, as his name is on the list.”

“And suppose he erases it? Suppose you then find yourself dealing with a second blackmailer, even more grasping and more powerful than the first and one who, as a political adversary, is in a better position than Daubrecq to maintain the contest?”

The secretary-general was struck by the argument. After a moment’s thought, he said:

“Come and see me in my office at four o’clock to-morrow. I will give you the particulars. What is your address, in case I should want you?”

“M. Nicole, 25, Place de Clichy. I am staying at a friend’s flat, which he has lent me during his absence.”

The interview was at an end. M. Nicole thanked the secretary-general, with a very low bow, and walked out, accompanied by Mme. Mergy:

“That’s an excellent piece of work,” he said, outside, rubbing his hands. “I can march into the police-office whenever I like, and set the whole lot to work.”

Mme. Mergy, who was less hopefully inclined, said:

“Alas, will you be in time? What terrifies me is the thought that the list may be destroyed.”

“Goodness gracious me, by whom? By Daubrecq?”

“No, but by the marquis, when he gets hold of it.”

“He hasn’t got it yet! Daubrecq will resist long enough, at any rate, for us to reach him. Just think! Prasville is at my orders!”

“Suppose he discovers who you are? The least inquiry will prove that there is no such person as M. Nicole.”

“But it will not prove that M. Nicole is the same person as Arsène Lupin. Besides, make yourself easy. Prasville is not only beneath contempt as a detective: he has but one aim in life, which is to destroy his old enemy, Daubrecq. To achieve that aim, all means are equally good; and he will not waste time in verifying the identity of a M. Nicole who promises him Daubrecq. Not to mention that I was brought by you and that, when all is said, my little gifts did dazzle him to some extent. So let us go ahead boldly.”

Clarisse always recovered confidence in Lupin’s presence. The future seemed less appalling to her; and she admitted, she forced herself to admit, that the chances of saving Gilbert were not lessened by that hideous death-sentence. But he could not prevail upon her to return to Brittany. She wanted to fight by his side. She wanted to be there and share all his hopes and all his disappointments.

The next day the inquiries of the police confirmed what Prasville and Lupin already knew. The Marquis d’Albufex had been very deeply involved in the business of the canal, so deeply that Prince Napoleon was obliged to remove him from the management of his political campaign in France; and he kept up his very extravagant style of living only by dint of constant loans and makeshifts. On the other hand, in so far as concerned the kidnapping of Daubrecq, it was ascertained that, contrary to his usual custom, the marquis had not appeared in his club between six and seven that evening and had not dined at home. He did not come back until midnight; and then he came on foot.

M. Nicole’s accusation, therefore, was receiving an early proof. Unfortunately—and Lupin was no more successful in his own attempts—it was impossible to obtain the least clue as to the motor-car, the chauffeur and the four people who had entered Daubrecq’s house. Were they associates of the marquis, compromised in the canal affair like himself? Were they men in his pay? Nobody knew.

The whole search, consequently, had to be concentrated upon the marquis and the country-seats and houses which he might possess at a certain distance from Paris, a distance which, allowing for the average speed of a motor-car and the inevitable stoppages, could be put at sixty to ninety miles.

Now d’Albufex, having sold everything that he ever had, possessed neither country-houses nor landed estates.

They turned their attention to the marquis’ relations and intimate friends. Was he able on this side to dispose of some safe retreat in which to imprison Daubrecq?

The result was equally fruitless.

And the days passed. And what days for Clarisse Mergy! Each of them brought Gilbert nearer to the terrible day of reckoning. Each of them meant twenty-four hours less from the date which Clarisse had instinctively fixed in her mind. And she said to Lupin, who was racked with the same anxiety:

“Fifty-five days more.... Fifty days more.... What can one do in so few days?... Oh, I beg of you.... I beg of you....”

What could they do indeed? Lupin, who would not leave the task of watching the marquis to any one but himself, practically lived without sleeping. But the marquis had resumed his regular life; and, doubtless suspecting something, did not risk going away.

Once alone, he went down to the Duc de Montmaur’s, in the daytime. The duke kept a pack of boar-hounds, with which he hunted the Forest of Durlaine. D’Albufex maintained no relations with him outside the hunt.

“It is hardly likely,” said Prasville, “that the Duc de Montmaur, an exceedingly wealthy man, who is interested only in his estates and his hunting and takes no part in politics, should lend himself to the illegal detention of Daubrecq the deputy in his chateau.”

Lupin agreed; but, as he did not wish to leave anything to chance, the next week, seeing d’Albufex go out one morning in riding-dress, he followed him to the Gare du Nord and took the same train.

He got out at Aumale, where d’Albufex found a carriage at the station which took him to the Chateau de Montmaur.

Lupin lunched quietly, hired a bicycle and came in view of the house at the moment when the guests were going into the park, in motor-cars or mounted. The Marquis d’Albufex was one of the horsemen.

Thrice, in the course of the day, Lupin saw him cantering along. And he found him, in the evening, at the station, where d’Albufex rode up, followed by a huntsman.

The proof, therefore, was conclusive; and there was nothing suspicious on that side. Why did Lupin, nevertheless, resolve not to be satisfied with appearances? And why, next day, did he send the Masher to find out things in the neighbourhood of Montmaur? It was an additional precaution, based upon no logical reason, but agreeing with his methodical and careful manner of acting.

Two days later he received from the Masher, among other information of less importance, a list of the house-party at Montmaur and of all the servants and keepers.

One name struck him, among those of the huntsmen. He at once wired:

“Inquire about huntsman Sébastiani.”

The Masher’s answer was received the next day:

“Sébastiani, a Corsican, was recommended to the Duc de Montmaur by the Marquis d’Albufex. He lives at two or three miles from the house, in a hunting-lodge built among the ruins of the feudal stronghold which was the cradle of the Montmaur family.”

“That’s it,” said Lupin to Clarisse Mergy, showing her the Masher’s letter. “That name, Sébastiani, at once reminded me that d’Albufex is of Corsican descent. There was a connection....”

“Then what do you intend to do?”

“If Daubrecq is imprisoned in those ruins, I intend to enter into communication with him.”

“He will distrust you.”

“No. Lately, acting on the information of the police, I ended by discovering the two old ladies who carried off your little Jacques at Saint-Germain and who brought him, the same evening, to Neuilly. They are two old maids, cousins of Daubrecq, who makes them a small monthly allowance. I have been to call on those Demoiselles Rousselot; remember the name and the address: 134 bis, Rue du Bac. I inspired them with confidence, promised them to find their cousin and benefactor; and the elder sister, Euphrasie Rousselot, gave me a letter in which she begs Daubrecq to trust M. Nicole entirely. So you see, I have taken every precaution. I shall leave to-night.”

“We, you mean,” said Clarisse.

“You!”

“Can I go on living like this, in feverish inaction?” And she whispered, “I am no longer counting the days, the thirty-eight or forty days that remain to us: I am counting the hours.”

Lupin felt that her resolution was too strong for him to try to combat it. They both started at five o’clock in the morning, by motor-car. The Growler went with them.

So as not to arouse suspicion, Lupin chose a large town as his headquarters. At Amiens, where he installed Clarisse, he was only eighteen miles from Montmaur.

At eight o’clock he met the Masher not far from the old fortress, which was known in the neighbourhood by the name of Mortepierre, and he examined the locality under his guidance.

On the confines of the forest, the little river Ligier, which has dug itself a deep valley at this spot, forms a loop which is overhung by the enormous cliff of Mortepierre.

“Nothing to be done on this side,” said Lupin. “The cliff is steep, over two hundred feet high, and the river hugs it all round.”

Not far away they found a bridge that led to the foot of a path which wound, through the oaks and pines, up to a little esplanade, where stood a massive, iron-bound gate, studded with nails and flanked on either side by a large tower.

“Is this where Sébastiani the huntsman lives?” asked Lupin.

“Yes,” said the Masher, “with his wife, in a lodge standing in the midst of the ruins. I also learnt that he has three tall sons and that all the four were supposed to be away for a holiday on the day when Daubrecq was carried off.”

“Oho!” said Lupin. “The coincidence is worth remembering. It seems likely enough that the business was done by those chaps and their father.”

Toward the end of the afternoon Lupin availed himself of a breach to the right of the towers to scale the curtain. From there he was able to see the huntsman’s lodge and the few remains of the old fortress: here, a bit of wall, suggesting the mantel of a chimney; further away, a water-tank; on this side, the arches of a chapel; on the other, a heap of fallen stones.

A patrol-path edged the cliff in front; and, at one of the ends of this patrol-path, there were the remains of a formidable donjon-keep razed almost level with the ground.

Lupin returned to Clarisse Mergy in the evening. And from that time he went backward and forward between Amiens and Mortepierre, leaving the Growler and the Masher permanently on the watch.

And six days passed. Sébastiani’s habits seemed to be subject solely to the duties of his post. He used to go up to the Chateau de Montmaur, walk about in the forest, note the tracks of the game and go his rounds at night.

But, on the seventh day, learning that there was to be a meet and that a carriage had been sent to Aumale Station in the morning, Lupin took up his post in a cluster of box and laurels which surrounded the little esplanade in front of the gate.

At two o’clock he heard the pack give tongue. They approached, accompanied by hunting-cries, and then drew farther away. He heard them again, about the middle of the afternoon, not quite so distinctly; and that was all. But suddenly, amid the silence, the sound of galloping horses reached his ears; and, a few minutes later, he saw two riders climbing the river-path.

He recognized the Marquis d’Albufex and Sébastiani. On reaching the esplanade, they both alighted; and a woman—the huntsman’s wife, no doubt—opened the gate. Sébastiani fastened the horses’ bridles to rings fixed on a post at a few yards from Lupin and ran to join the marquis. The gate closed behind them.

Lupin did not hesitate; and, though it was still broad daylight, relying upon the solitude of the place, he hoisted himself to the hollow of the breach. Passing his head through cautiously, he saw the two men and Sébastiani’s wife hurrying toward the ruins of the keep.

The huntsman drew aside a hanging screen of ivy and revealed the entrance to a stairway, which he went down, as did d’Albufex, leaving his wife on guard on the terrace.

There was no question of going in after them; and Lupin returned to his hiding-place. He did not wait long before the gate opened again.

The Marquis d’Albufex seemed in a great rage. He was striking the leg of his boot with his whip and mumbling angry words which Lupin was able to distinguish when the distance became less great:

“Ah, the hound!... I’ll make him speak.... I’ll come back to-night . . . to-night, at ten o’clock, do you hear, Sébastiani?... And we shall do what’s necessary.... Oh, the brute!”

Sébastiani unfastened the horses. D’Albufex turned to the woman:

“See that your sons keep a good watch.... If any one attempts to deliver him, so much the worse for him. The trapdoor is there. Can I rely upon them?”

“As thoroughly as on myself, monsieur le marquis,” declared the huntsman. “They know what monsieur le marquis has done for me and what he means to do for them. They will shrink at nothing.”

“Let us mount and get back to the hounds,” said d’Albufex.

So things were going as Lupin had supposed. During these runs, d’Albufex, taking a line of his own, would push off to Mortepierre, without anybody’s suspecting his trick. Sébastiani, who was devoted to him body and soul, for reasons connected with the past into which it was not worth while to inquire, accompanied him; and together they went to see the captive, who was closely watched by the huntsman’s wife and his three sons.

“That’s where we stand,” said Lupin to Clarisse Mergy, when he joined her at a neighbouring inn. “This evening the marquis will put Daubrecq to the question—a little brutally, but indispensably—as I intended to do myself.”

“And Daubrecq will give up his secret,” said Clarisse, already quite upset.

“I’m afraid so.”

“Then....”

“I am hesitating between two plans,” said Lupin, who seemed very calm. “Either to prevent the interview....”

“How?”

“By forestalling d’Albufex. At nine o’clock, the Growler, the Masher and I climb the ramparts, burst into the fortress, attack the keep, disarm the garrison . . . and the thing’s done: Daubrecq is ours.”

“Unless Sébastiani’s sons fling him through the trapdoor to which the marquis alluded....”

“For that reason,” said Lupin, “I intend to risk that violent measure only as a last resort and in case my other plan should not be practicable.”

“What is the other plan?”

“To witness the interview. If Daubrecq does not speak, it will give us the time to prepare to carry him off under more favourable conditions. If he speaks, if they compel him to reveal the place where the list of the Twenty-seven is hidden, I shall know the truth at the same time as d’Albufex, and I swear to God that I shall turn it to account before he does.”

“Yes, yes,” said Clarisse. “But how do you propose to be present?”

“I don’t know yet,” Lupin confessed. “It depends on certain particulars which the Masher is to bring me and on some which I shall find out for myself.”

He left the inn and did not return until an hour later as night was falling. The Masher joined him.

“Have you the little book?” asked Lupin.

“Yes, governor. It was what I saw at the Aumale newspaper-shop. I got it for ten sous.”

“Give it me.”

The Masher handed him an old, soiled, torn pamphlet, entitled, on the cover, A Visit to Mortepierre, 1824, with plans and illustrations.

Lupin at once looked for the plan of the donjon-keep.

“That’s it,” he said. “Above the ground were three stories, which have been razed, and below the ground, dug out of the rock, two stories, one of which was blocked up by the rubbish, while the other.... There, that’s where our friend Daubrecq lies. The name is significant: the torture-chamber.... Poor, dear friend!... Between the staircase and the torture-chamber, two doors. Between those two doors, a recess in which the three brothers obviously sit, gun in hand.”

“So it is impossible for you to get in that way without being seen.”

“Impossible . . . unless I come from above, by the story that has fallen in, and look for a means of entrance through the ceiling.... But that is very risky....”

He continued to turn the pages of the book. Clarisse asked:

“Is there no window to the room?”

“Yes,” he said. “From below, from the river—I have just been there—you can see a little opening, which is also marked on the plan. But it is fifty yards up, sheer; and even then the rock overhangs the water. So that again is out of the question.”

He glanced through a few pages of the book. The title of one chapter struck him: The Lovers’ Towers. He read the opening lines:

“In the old days, the donjon was known to the people of the neighbourhood as the Lovers’ Tower, in memory of a fatal tragedy that marked it in the Middle Ages. The Comte de Mortepierre, having received proofs of his wife’s faithlessness, imprisoned her in the torture-chamber, where she spent twenty years. One night, her lover, the Sire de Tancarville, with reckless courage, set up a ladder in the river and then clambered up the face of the cliff till he came to the window of the room. After filing> the bars, he succeeded in releasing the woman he loved and bringing her down with him by means of a rope. They both reached the top of the ladder, which was watched by his friends, when a shot was fired from the patrol-path and hit the man in the shoulder. The two lovers were hurled into space....”

There was a pause, after he had read this, a long pause during which each of them drew a mental picture of the tragic escape. So, three or four centuries earlier, a man, risking his life, had attempted that surprising feat and would have succeeded but for the vigilance of some sentry who heard the noise. A man had ventured! A man had dared! A man done it!

Lupin raised his eyes to Clarisse. She was looking at him . . . with such a desperate, such a beseeching look! The look of a mother who demanded the impossible and who would have sacrificed anything to save her son.

“Masher,” he said, “get a strong rope, but very slender, so that I can roll it round my waist, and very long: fifty or sixty yards. You, Growler, go and look for three or four ladders and fasten them end to end.”

“Why, what are you thinking of, governor?” cried the two accomplices. “What, you mean to.... But it’s madness!”

“Madness? Why? What another has done I can do.”

“But it’s a hundred chances to one that you break your neck.”

“Well, you see, Masher, there’s one chance that I don’t.”

“But, governor....”

“That’s enough, my friends. Meet me in an hour on the river-bank.”

---

The preparations took long in the making. It was difficult to find the material for a fifty-foot ladder that would reach the first ledge of the cliff; and it required an endless effort and care to join the different sections.

At last, a little after nine o’clock, it was set up in the middle of the river and held in position by a boat, the bows of which were wedged between two of the rungs, while the stern was rammed into the bank.

The road through the river-valley was little used, and nobody came to interrupt the work. The night was dark, the sky heavy with moveless clouds.

Lupin gave the Masher and the Growler their final instructions and said, with a laugh:

“I can’t tell you how amused I am at the thought of seeing Daubrecq’s face when they proceed to take his scalp or slice his skin into ribbons. Upon my word, it’s worth the journey.”

Clarisse also had taken a seat in the boat. He said to her:

“Until we meet again. And, above all, don’t stir. Whatever happens, not a movement, not a cry.”

“Can anything happen?” she asked.

“Why, remember the Sire de Tancarville! It was at the very moment when he was achieving his object, with his true love in his arms, that an accident betrayed him. But be easy: I shall be all right.”

She made no reply. She seized his hand and grasped it warmly between her own.

He put his foot on the ladder and made sure that it did not sway too much. Then he went up.

He soon reached the top rung.

This was where the dangerous ascent began, a difficult ascent at the start, because of the excessive steepness, and developing, mid-way, into an absolute escalade.

Fortunately, here and there were little hollows, in which his feet found a resting-place, and projecting stones, to which his hands clung. But twice those stones gave way and he slipped; and twice he firmly believed that all was lost. Finding a deeper hollow, he took a rest. He was worn out, felt quite ready to throw up the enterprise, asked himself if it was really worth while for him to expose himself to such danger:

“I say!” he thought. “Seems to me you’re showing the white feather, Lupin, old boy. Throw up the enterprise? Then Daubrecq will babble his secret, the marquis will possess himself of the list, Lupin will return empty-handed, and Gilbert....”

The long rope which he had fastened round his waist caused him needless inconvenience and fatigue. He fixed one of the ends to the strap of his trousers and let the rope uncoil all the way down the ascent, so that he could use it, on returning, as a hand-rail.

Then he once more clutched at the rough surface of the cliff and continued the climb, with bruised nails and bleeding fingers. At every moment he expected the inevitable fall. And what discouraged him most was to hear the murmur of voices rising from the boat, murmur so distinct that it seemed as though he were not increasing the distance between his companions and himself.

And he remembered the Sire de Tancarville, alone, he too, amid the darkness, who must have shivered at the noise of the stones which he loosened and sent bounding down the cliff. How the least sound reverberated through the silence! If one of Daubrecq’s guards was peering into the gloom from the Lovers’ Tower, it meant a shot . . . and death.

And he climbed . . . he climbed.... He had climbed so long that he ended by imagining that the goal was passed. Beyond a doubt, he had slanted unawares to the right or left and he would finish at the patrol-path. What a stupid upshot! And what other upshot could there be to an attempt which the swift force of events had not allowed him to study and prepare?

Madly, he redoubled his efforts, raised himself by a number of yards, slipped, recovered the lost ground, clutched a bunch of roots that came loose in his hand, slipped once more and was abandoning the game in despair when, suddenly, stiffening himself and contracting his whole frame, his muscles and his will, he stopped still: a sound of voices seemed to issue from the very rock which he was grasping.

He listened. It came from the right. Turning his head, he thought that he saw a ray of light penetrating the darkness of space. By what effort of energy, by what imperceptible movements he succeeded in dragging himself to the spot he was never able exactly to realize. But suddenly he found himself on the ledge of a fairly wide opening, at least three yards deep, which dug into the wall of the cliff like a passage, while its other end, much narrower, was closed by three bars.

Lupin crawled along. His head reached the bars. And he saw....

CHAPTER VIII.

THE LOVERS’ TOWER

The torture-chamber showed beneath him. It was a large, irregular room, divided into unequal portions by the four wide, massive pillars that supported its arched roof. A smell of damp and mildew came from its walls and from its flags moistened by the water that trickled from without. Its appearance at any time must have been gruesome. But, at that moment, with the tall figures of Sébastiani and his sons, with the slanting gleams of light that fell between the pillars, with the vision of the captive chained down upon the truckle-bed, it assumed a sinister and barbarous aspect.

Daubrecq was in the front part of the room, four or five yards down from the window at which Lupin lurked. In addition to the ancient chains that had been used to fasten him to his bed and to fasten the bed to an iron hook in the wall, his wrists and ankles were girt with leather thongs; and an ingenious arrangement caused his least movement to set in motion a bell hung to the nearest pillar.

A lamp placed on a stool lit him full in the face.

The Marquis d’Albufex was standing beside him. Lupin could see his pale features, his grizzled moustache, his long, lean form as he looked at his prisoner with an expression of content and of gratified hatred.

A few minutes passed in profound silence. Then the marquis gave an order:

“Light those three candles, Sébastiani, so that I can see him better.”

And, when the three candles were lit and he had taken a long look at Daubrecq, he stooped over him and said, almost gently:

“I can’t say what will be the end of you and me. But at any rate I shall have had some deuced happy moments in this room. You have done me so much harm, Daubrecq! The tears you have made me shed! Yes, real tears, real sobs of despair.... The money you have robbed me of! A fortune!... And my terror at the thought that you might give me away! You had but to utter my name to complete my ruin and bring about my disgrace!... Oh, you villain!...”

Daubrecq did not budge. He had been deprived of his black glasses, but still kept his spectacles, which reflected the light from the candles. He had lost a good deal of flesh; and the bones stood out above his sunken cheeks.

“Come along,” said d’Albufex. “The time has come to act. It seems that there are rogues prowling about the neighbourhood. Heaven forbid that they are here on your account and try to release you; for that would mean your immediate death, as you know.... Is the trapdoor still in working order, Sébastiani?”

Sébastiani came nearer, knelt on one knee and lifted and turned a ring, at the foot of the bed, which Lupin had not noticed. One of the flagstones moved on a pivot, disclosing a black hole.

“You see,” the marquis continued, “everything is provided for; and I have all that I want at hand, including dungeons: bottomless dungeons, says the legend of the castle. So there is nothing to hope for, no help of any kind. Will you speak?”

Daubrecq did not reply; and he went on:

“This is the fourth time that I am questioning you, Daubrecq. It is the fourth time that I have troubled to ask you for the document which you possess, in order that I may escape your blackmailing proceedings. It is the fourth time and the last. Will you speak?”

The same silence as before. D’Albufex made a sign to Sébastiani. The huntsman stepped forward, followed by two of his sons. One of them held a stick in his hand.

“Go ahead,” said d’Albufex, after waiting a few seconds.

Sébastiani slackened the thongs that bound Daubrecq’s wrists and inserted and fixed the stick between the thongs.

“Shall I turn, monsieur le marquis?”

A further silence. The marquis waited. Seeing that Daubrecq did not flinch, he whispered:

“Can’t you speak? Why expose yourself to physical suffering?”

No reply.

“Turn away, Sébastiani.”

Sébastiani made the stick turn a complete circle. The thongs stretched and tightened. Daubrecq gave a groan.

“You won’t speak? Still, you know that I won’t give way, that I can’t give way, that I hold you and that, if necessary, I shall torture you till you die of it. You won’t speak? You won’t?... Sébastiani, once more.”

The huntsman obeyed. Daubrecq gave a violent start of pain and fell back on his bed with a rattle in his throat.

“You fool!” cried the marquis, shaking with rage. “Why don’t you speak? What, haven’t you had enough of that list? Surely it’s somebody else’s turn! Come, speak.... Where is it? One word. One word only . . . and we will leave you in peace.... And, to-morrow, when I have the list, you shall be free. Free, do you understand? But, in Heaven’s name, speak!... Oh, the brute! Sébastiani, one more turn.”

Sébastiani made a fresh effort. The bones cracked.

“Help! Help!” cried Daubrecq, in a hoarse voice, vainly struggling to release himself. And, in a spluttering whisper, “Mercy . . . mercy.”

It was a dreadful sight.... The faces of the three sons were horror-struck. Lupin shuddered, sick at heart, and realized that he himself could never have accomplished that abominable thing. He listened for the words that were bound to come. He must learn the truth. Daubrecq’s secret was about to be expressed in syllables, in words wrung from him by pain. And Lupin began to think of his retreat, of the car which was waiting for him, of the wild rush to Paris, of the victory at hand.

“Speak,” whispered d’Albufex. “Speak and it will be over.”

“Yes . . . yes . . .” gasped Daubrecq.

“Well...?”

“Later . . . to-morrow....”

“Oh, you’re mad!... What are you talking about: to-morrow?... Sébastiani, another turn!”

“No, no!” yelled Daubrecq. “Stop!”

“Speak!”

“Well, then . . . the paper.... I have hidden the paper....”

But his pain was too great. He raised his head with a last effort, uttered incoherent words, succeeded in twice saying, “Marie.... Marie....” and fell back, exhausted and lifeless.

“Let go at once!” said d’Albufex to Sébastiani. “Hang it all, can we have overdone it?”

But a rapid examination showed him that Daubrecq had only fainted. Thereupon, he himself, worn out with the excitement, dropped on the foot of the bed and, wiping the beads of perspiration from his forehead, stammered:

“Oh, what a dirty business!”

“Perhaps that’s enough for to-day,” said the huntsman, whose rough face betrayed a certain emotion. “We might try again to-morrow or the next day....”

The marquis was silent. One of the sons handed him a flask of brandy. He poured out half a glass and drank it down at a draught:

“To-morrow?” he said. “No. Here and now. One little effort more. At the stage which he has reached, it won’t be difficult.” And, taking the huntsman aside, “Did you hear what he said? What did he mean by that word, ‘Marie’? He repeated it twice.”

“Yes, twice,” said the huntsman. “Perhaps he entrusted the document to a person called Marie.”

“Not he!” protested d’Albufex. “He never entrusts anything to anybody. It means something different.”

“But what, monsieur le marquis?”

“We’ll soon find out, I’ll answer for it.”

At that moment, Daubrecq drew a long breath and stirred on his couch.

D’Albufex, who had now recovered all his composure and who did not take his eyes off the enemy, went up to him and said:

“You see, Daubrecq, it’s madness to resist.... Once you’re beaten, there’s nothing for it but to submit to your conqueror, instead of allowing yourself to be tortured like an idiot.... Come, be sensible.”

He turned to Sébastiani:

“Tighten the rope . . . let him feel it a little that will wake him up.... He’s shamming death....” Sébastiani took hold of the stick again and turned until the cord touched the swollen flesh. Daubrecq gave a start.

“That’ll do, Sébastiani,” said the marquis. “Our friend seems favourably disposed and understands the need for coming to terms. That’s so, Daubrecq, is it not? You prefer to have done with it? And you’re quite right!”

The two men were leaning over the sufferer, Sébastiani with his hand on the stick, d’Albufex holding the lamp so as to throw the light on Daubrecq’s face: “His lips are moving . . . he’s going to speak. Loosen the rope a little, Sébastiani: I don’t want our friend to be hurt.... No, tighten it: I believe our friend is hesitating.... One turn more . . . stop!... That’s done it! Oh, my dear Daubrecq, if you can’t speak plainer than that, it’s no use! What? What did you say?”

Arsène Lupin muttered an oath. Daubrecq was speaking and he, Lupin, could not hear a word of what he said! In vain, he pricked up his ears, suppressed the beating of his heart and the throbbing of his temples: not a sound reached him.

“Confound it!” he thought. “I never expected this. What am I to do?”

He was within an ace of covering Daubrecq with his revolver and putting a bullet into him which would cut short any explanation. But he reflected that he himself would then be none the wiser and that it was better to trust to events in the hope of making the most of them.

Meanwhile the confession continued beneath him, indistinctly, interrupted by silences and mingled with moans. D’Albufex clung to his prey:

“Go on!... Finish, can’t you?...”

And he punctuated the sentences with exclamations of approval:

“Good!... Capital!... Oh, how funny!... And no one suspected?... Not even Prasville?... What an ass!... Loosen a bit, Sébastiani: don’t you see that our friend is out of breath?... Keep calm, Daubrecq . . . don’t tire yourself.... And so, my dear fellow, you were saying....”

That was the last. There was a long whispering to which d’Albufex listened without further interruption and of which Arsène Lupin could not catch the least syllable. Then the marquis drew himself up and exclaimed, joyfully:

“That’s it!.... Thank you, Daubrecq. And, believe me, I shall never forget what you have just done. If ever you’re in need, you have only to knock at my door and there will always be a crust of bread for you in the kitchen and a glass of water from the filter. Sébastiani, look after monsieur le député as if he were one of your sons. And, first of all, release him from his bonds. It’s a heartless thing to truss one’s fellow-man like that, like a chicken on the spit!”

“Shall we give him something to drink?” suggested the huntsman.

“Yes, that’s it, give him a drink.”

Sébastiani and his sons undid the leather straps, rubbed the bruised wrists, dressed them with an ointment and bandaged them. Then Daubrecq swallowed a few drops of brandy.

“Feeling better?” said the marquis. “Pooh, it’s nothing much! In a few hours, it won’t show; and you’ll be able to boast of having been tortured, as in the good old days of the Inquisition. You lucky dog!”

He took out his watch. “Enough said! Sébastiani, let your sons watch him in turns. You, take me to the station for the last train.”

“Then are we to leave him like that, monsieur le marquis, free to move as he pleases?”

“Why not? You don’t imagine that we are going to keep him here to the day of his death? No, Daubrecq, sleep quietly. I shall go to your place to-morrow afternoon; and, if the document is where you told me, a telegram shall be sent off at once and you shall be set free. You haven’t told me a lie, I suppose?”

He went back to Daubrecq and, stooping over him again:

“No humbug, eh? That would be very silly of you. I should lose a day, that’s all. Whereas you would lose all the days that remain to you to live. But no, the hiding-place is too good. A fellow doesn’t invent a thing like that for fun. Come on, Sébastiani. You shall have the telegram to-morrow.”

“And suppose they don’t let you into the house, monsieur le marquis?”

“Why shouldn’t they?”

“The house in the Square Lamartine is occupied by Prasville’s men.”

“Don’t worry, Sébastiani. I shall get in. If they don’t open the door, there’s always the window. And, if the window won’t open, I shall arrange with one of Prasville’s men. It’s a question of money, that’s all. And, thank goodness, I shan’t be short of that, henceforth! Good-night, Daubrecq.”

He went out, accompanied by Sébastiani, and the heavy door closed after them.

Lupin at once effected his retreat, in accordance with a plan which he had worked out during this scene.

The plan was simple enough: to scramble, by means of his rope, to the bottom of the cliff, take his friends with him, jump into the motor-car and attack d’Albufex and Sébastiani on the deserted road that leads to Aumale Station. There could be no doubt about the issue of the contest. With d’Albufex and Sébastiani prisoners; it would be an easy matter to make one of them speak. D’Albufex had shown him how to set about it; and Clarisse Mergy would be inflexible where it was a question of saving her son.

He took the rope with which he had provided himself and groped about to find a jagged piece of rock round which to pass it, so as to leave two equal lengths hanging, by which he could let himself down. But, when he found what he wanted, instead of acting swiftly—for the business was urgent—he stood motionless, thinking. His scheme failed to satisfy him at the last moment.

“It’s absurd, what I’m proposing,” he said to himself. “Absurd and illogical. How can I tell that d’Albufex and Sébastiani will not escape me? How can I even tell that, once they are in my power, they will speak? No, I shall stay. There are better things to try . . . much better things. It’s not those two I must be at, but Daubrecq. He’s done for; he has not a kick left in him. If he has told the marquis his secret, there is no reason why he shouldn’t tell it to Clarisse and me, when we employ the same methods. That’s settled! We’ll kidnap the Daubrecq bird.” And he continued, “Besides, what do I risk? If the scheme miscarries, Clarisse and I will rush off to Paris and, together with Prasville, organize a careful watch in the Square Lamartine to prevent d’Albufex from benefiting by Daubrecq’s revelations. The great thing is for Prasville to be warned of the danger. He shall be.”

The church-clock in a neighbouring village struck twelve. That gave Lupin six or seven hours to put his new plan into execution. He set to work forthwith.

When moving away from the embrasure which had the window at the bottom of it, he had come upon a clump of small shrubs in one of the hollows of the cliff. He cut away a dozen of these, with his knife, and whittled them all down to the same size. Then he cut off two equal lengths from his rope. These were the uprights of the ladder. He fastened the twelve little sticks between the uprights and thus contrived a rope-ladder about six yards long.

When he returned to this post, there was only one of the three sons beside Daubrecq’s bed in the torture-chamber. He was smoking his pipe by the lamp. Daubrecq was asleep.

“Hang it!” thought Lupin. “Is the fellow going to sit there all night? In that case, there’s nothing for me to do but to slip off....”

The idea that d’Albufex was in possession of the secret vexed him mightily. The interview at which he had assisted had left the clear impression in his mind that the marquis was working “on his own” and that, in securing the list, he intended not only to escape Daubrecq’s activity, but also to gain Daubrecq’s power and build up his fortune anew by the identical means which Daubrecq had employed.

That would have meant, for Lupin, a fresh battle to wage against a fresh enemy. The rapid march of events did not allow of the contemplation of such a possibility. He must at all costs spike the Marquis d’Albufex’ guns by warning Prasville.

However, Lupin remained held back by the stubborn hope of some incident that would give him the opportunity of acting.

The clock struck half-past twelve.

It struck one.

The waiting became terrible, all the more so as an icy mist rose from the valley and Lupin felt the cold penetrate to his very marrow.

He heard the trot of a horse in the distance:

“Sébastiani returning from the station,” he thought.

But the son who was watching in the torture-chamber, having finished his packet of tobacco, opened the door and asked his brothers if they had a pipeful for him. They made some reply; and he went out to go to the lodge.

And Lupin was astounded. No sooner was the door closed than Daubrecq, who had been so sound asleep, sat up on his couch, listened, put one foot to the ground, followed by the other, and, standing up, tottering a little, but firmer on his legs than one would have expected, tried his strength.

“Well” said Lupin, “the beggar doesn’t take long recovering. He can very well help in his own escape. There’s just one point that ruffles me: will he allow himself to be convinced? Will he consent to go with me? Will he not think that this miraculous assistance which comes to him straight from heaven is a trap laid by the marquis?”

But suddenly Lupin remembered the letter which he had made Daubrecq’s old cousins write, the letter of recommendation, so to speak, which the elder of the two sisters Rousselot had signed with her Christian name, Euphrasie.

It was in his pocket. He took it and listened. Not a sound, except the faint noise of Daubrecq’s footsteps on the flagstones. Lupin considered that the moment had come. He thrust his arm through the bars and threw the letter in.

Daubrecq seemed thunderstruck.

The letter had fluttered through the room and lay on the floor, at three steps from him. Where did it come from? He raised his head toward the window and tried to pierce the darkness that hid all the upper part of the room from his eyes. Then he looked at the envelope, without yet daring to touch it, as though he dreaded a snare. Then, suddenly, after a glance at the door, he stooped briskly, seized the envelope and opened it.

“Ah,” he said, with a sigh of delight, when he saw the signature.

He read the letter half-aloud:

“Rely implicitly on the bearer of this note. He has succeeded in discovering the marquis’ secret, with the money which we gave him, and has contrived a plan of escape. Everything is prepared for your flight.

“Euphrasie Rousselot.”

He read the letter again, repeated, “Euphrasie.... Euphrasie....” and raised his head once more.

Lupin whispered:

“It will take me two or three hours to file through one of the bars. Are Sébastiani and his sons coming back?”

“Yes, they are sure to,” replied Daubrecq, in the same low voice, “but I expect they will leave me to myself.”

“But they sleep next door?”

“Yes.”

“Won’t they hear?”

“No, the door is too thick.”

“Very well. In that case, it will soon be done. I have a rope-ladder. Will you be able to climb up alone, without my assistance?”

“I think so.... I’ll try.... It’s my wrists that they’ve broken.... Oh, the brutes! I can hardly move my hands . . . and I have very little strength left. But I’ll try all the same . . . needs must....”

He stopped, listened and, with his finger to his mouth, whispered:

“Hush!”

When Sébastiani and his sons entered the room, Daubrecq, who had hidden the letter and lain down on his bed, pretended to wake with a start.

The huntsman brought him a bottle of wine, a glass and some food:

“How goes it, monsieur le député?” he cried. “Well, perhaps we did squeeze a little hard.... It’s very painful, that thumbscrewing. Seems they often did it at the time of the Great Revolution and Bonaparte . . . in the days of the chauffeurs.[C] A pretty invention! Nice and clean . . . no bloodshed.... And it didn’t last long either! In twenty minutes, you came out with the missing word!” Sébastiani burst out laughing. “By the way, monsieur le député, my congratulations! A capital hiding-place. Who would ever suspect it?... You see, what put us off, monsieur le marquis and me, was that name of Marie which you let out at first. You weren’t telling a lie; but there you are, you know: the word was only half-finished. We had to know the rest. Say what you like, it’s amusing! Just think, on your study-table! Upon my word, what a joke!”

The huntsman rose and walked up and down the room, rubbing his hands:

“Monsieur le marquis is jolly well pleased, so pleased, in fact, that he himself is coming to-morrow evening to let you out. Yes, he has thought it over; there will be a few formalities: you may have to sign a cheque or two, stump up, what, and make good monsieur le marquis’ expense and trouble. But what’s that to you? A trifle! Not to mention that, from now on, there will be no more chains, no more straps round your wrists; in short, you will be treated like a king! And I’ve even been told—look here!—to allow you a good bottle of old wine and a flask of brandy.”

Sébastiani let fly a few more jests, then took the lamp, made a last examination of the room and said to his sons:

“Let’s leave him to sleep. You also, take a rest, all three of you. But sleep with one eye open. One never can tell....” They withdrew.

Lupin waited a little longer and asked, in a low voice:

“Can I begin?”

“Yes, but be careful. It’s not impossible that they may go on a round in an hour or two.”

Lupin set to work. He had a very powerful file; and the iron of the bars, rusted and gnawed away by time, was, in places, almost reduced to dust. Twice Lupin stopped to listen, with ears pricked up. But it was only the patter of a rat over the rubbish in the upper story, or the flight of some night-bird; and he continued his task, encouraged by Daubrecq, who stood by the door, ready to warn him at the least alarm.

“Oof!” he said, giving a last stroke of the file. “I’m glad that’s over, for, on my word, I’ve been a bit cramped in this cursed tunnel . . . to say nothing of the cold....”

He bore with all his strength upon the bar, which he had sawn from below, and succeeded in forcing it down sufficiently for a man’s body to slip between the two remaining bars. Next, he had to go back to the end of the embrasure, the wider part, where he had left the rope-ladder. After fixing it to the bars, he called Daubrecq:

“Psst!... It’s all right.... Are you ready?”

“Yes . . . coming.... One more second, while I listen.... All right.... They’re asleep.... give me the ladder.”

Lupin lowered it and asked:

“Must I come down?”

“No.... I feel a little weak . . . but I shall manage.”

Indeed, he reached the window of the embrasure pretty quickly and crept along the passage in the wake of his rescuer. The open air, however, seemed to make him giddy. Also, to give himself strength, he had drunk half the bottle of wine; and he had a fainting-fit that kept him lying on the stones of the embrasure for half an hour. Lupin, losing patience, was fastening him to one end of the rope, of which the other end was knotted round the bars and was preparing to let him down like a bale of goods, when Daubrecq woke up, in better condition:

“That’s over,” he said. “I feel fit now. Will it take long?”

“Pretty long. We are a hundred and fifty yards up.”

“How was it that d’Albufex did not foresee that it was possible to escape this way?”

“The cliff is perpendicular.”

“And you were able to....”

“Well, your cousins insisted.... And then one has to live, you know, and they were free with their money.”

“The dear, good souls!” said Daubrecq. “Where are they?”

“Down below, in a boat.”

“Is there a river, then?”

“Yes, but we won’t talk, if you don’t mind. It’s dangerous.”

“One word more. Had you been there long when you threw me the letter?”

“No, no. A quarter of an hour or so. I’ll tell you all about it.... Meanwhile, we must hurry.”

Lupin went first, after recommending Daubrecq to hold tight to the rope and to come down backward. He would give him a hand at the difficult places.

It took them over forty minutes to reach the platform of the ledge formed by the cliff; and Lupin had several times to help his companion, whose wrists, still bruised from the torture, had lost all their strength and suppleness.

Over and over again, he groaned:

“Oh, the swine, they’ve done for me!... The swine!... Ah, d’Albufex, I’ll make you pay dear for this!...”

“Ssh!” said Lupin.

“What’s the matter?”

“A noise . . . up above....”

Standing motionless on the platform, they listened. Lupin thought of the Sire de Tancarville and the sentry who had killed him with a shot from his harquebus. He shivered, feeling all the anguish of the silence and the darkness.

“No,” he said, “I was mistaken.... Besides, it’s absurd.... They can’t hit us here.”

“Who would hit us?”

“No one . . . no one... it was a silly notion....”

He groped about till he found the uprights of the ladder; then he said:

“There, here’s the ladder. It is fixed in the bed of the river. A friend of mine is looking after it, as well as your cousins.”

He whistled:

“Here I am,” he said, in a low voice. “Hold the ladder fast.” And, to Daubrecq, “I’ll go first.”

Daubrecq objected:

“Perhaps it would be better for me to go down first.”

“Why?”

“I am very tired. You can tie your rope round my waist and hold me.... Otherwise, there is a danger that I might....”

“Yes, you are right,” said Lupin. “Come nearer.”

Daubrecq came nearer and knelt down on the rock. Lupin fastened the rope to him and then, stooping over, grasped one of the uprights in both hands to keep the ladder from shaking:

“Off you go,” he said.

At the same moment, he felt a violent pain in the shoulder:

“Blast it!” he said, sinking to the ground.

Daubrecq had stabbed him with a knife below the nape of the neck, a little to the right.

“You blackguard! You blackguard!”

He half-saw Daubrecq, in the dark, ridding himself of his rope, and heard him whisper:

“You’re a bit of a fool, you know!... You bring me a letter from my Rousselot cousins, in which I recognize the writing of the elder, Adelaide, but which that sly puss of an Adelaide, suspecting something and meaning to put me on my guard, if necessary, took care to sign with the name of the younger sister, Euphrasie Rousselot. You see, I tumbled to it! So, with a little reflection . . . you are Master Arsène Lupin, are you not? Clarisse’s protector, Gilbert’s saviour.... Poor Lupin, I fear you’re in a bad way.... I don’t use the knife often; but, when I do, I use it with a vengeance.”

He bent over the wounded man and felt in his pockets:

“Give me your revolver, can’t you? You see, your friends will know at once that it is not their governor; and they will try to secure me.... And, as I have not much strength left, a bullet or two.... Good-bye, Lupin. We shall meet in the next world, eh? Book me a nice flat, with all the latest conveniences.

“Good-bye, Lupin. And my best thanks. For really I don’t know what I should have done without you. By Jove, d’Albufex was hitting me hard! It’ll be a joke to meet the beggar again!”

Daubrecq had completed his preparations. He whistled once more. A reply came from the boat.

“Here I am,” he said.

With a last effort, Lupin put out his arm to stop him. But his hand touched nothing but space. He tried to call out, to warn his accomplices: his voice choked in his throat.

He felt a terrible numbness creep over his whole being. His temples buzzed.

Suddenly, shouts below. Then a shot. Then another, followed by a triumphant chuckle. And a woman’s wail and moans. And, soon after, two more shots.

Lupin thought of Clarisse, wounded, dead perhaps; of Daubrecq, fleeing victoriously; of d’Albufex; of the crystal stopper, which one or other of the two adversaries would recover unresisted. Then a sudden vision showed him the Sire de Tancarville falling with the woman he loved. Then he murmured, time after time:

“Clarisse.... Clarisse.... Gilbert....” A great silence overcame him; an infinite peace entered into him; and, without the least revolt, he received the impression that his exhausted body, with nothing now to hold it back, was rolling to the very edge of the rock, toward the abyss.